On April 17, 2010 three senior biology majors working on independent research projects with Dr. Kristian Hargadon presented posters of their work at the Virginia Collegiate Honors Council Conference held at Virginia Wesleyan College. 

Curtis Read and Justin Odanga have spent their spring semester exploring microbial biodiversity, isolating and identifying 6 species of bacteria from the environment and assessing the antimicrobial resistance/suscueptibility of these organisms.  Building off of skills learned in the lab portion of H-SC’s Microbiology course, Curtis and Justin employed a variety of diagnostic techniques to identify these species, including Gram stains, endospore stains, carbohydrate fermentation tests, nitrate reduction tests, catalase tests, motility tests, and several other biochemical tests.  Among the species identified were Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus malodoratus, Enterobacter agglomerans, and Bacillus polymyxa.  In what will undoubtedly become deparmental legend, this latter organism (B. polymyxa), which is very common, shares many diagnostic properties with Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax.  While their professor was indeed thrilled that this pathogen was not isolated on campus, the prospect definitely provided moments of excitement for Curtis and Justin, who were much more enthusiastic about potentially having found this organism!  Despite having their chances for instant fame ruined by their subsequent identification of a much less “exciting” organism, their results were indeed quite provocative and demonstrated striking patterns of bacterial resistance to the anibiotic penicillin.  Such findings do have significant implications regarding potential pathogenecity of these organisms, and future work may illuminate whether these organisms are also resistant to common antimicrobials used to control environmental microbes.  Curtis and Justin showed extreme dedication and enthusiasm throughout their project and received numerous compliments about their work at the VCHC conference.

Chad Harte, who received a cash prize for the Best Poster Award at the conference, presented his research on a particular cell type of the immune system known as the dendritic cell.  These cells play critical roles in immunity.  As immature cells, they provide immediate protection against invading pathogens;  upon maturation, they drive subsequent, more specific cells of the immune system to effectively respond to and eliminate the invaders.   Because dendritic cells are found in relatively low numbers in model organisms, these cells are difficult to study under experimental conditions.  Therefore, Chad’s work focused on characterizing an immature dendritic cell line known as JAWSII.  In particular, Chad evaluated the resonsiveness of these cells to the maturation stimuli lipopolysaccharide and lipteichoic acid.  He monitored dendritic cell responsiveness to these stimuli using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction technique to evaluate the expression of genes associated with dendritic cell maturation.  In exciting results, Chad demonstrated that exposure of the JAWSII cell line to maturation stimuli does upregulate the expression of certain genes encoding proteins essential to subsequent stimulation of immune responses.  These findings suggest that this cell line can be used as an effective model for the study of dendritic cells, and this work will serve as a “springboard” for subsequent work in Dr. Hargadon’s lab that aims to evaluate the influence that tumor cells have on dendritic maturation and activation.

Chad Harte, recipient of the VCHC Best Poster Award

Curtis Read (left) and Justin Odanga (right)

On April 14, Dr. Randy Jones, a 1998 Hampden-Sydney College graduate and current Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Virginia, visited the H-SC Biology Department to present a talk entitled “A Career Path Unforeseen.”  Dr. Jones’s talk focused on his experiences and career path decisions he faced during his high school years, his 4 years at Hampden-Sydney College, and his postgraduate work, and he concluded with remarks about those decisions that he is still facing today as he continues his research and education in nursing as a faculty member at UVA.  Dr. Jones has received numerous honors and awards for his teaching and research, including funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Psychosocial Oncology Society.  Most recently, he received a $350,000 grant from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation as Principal Investigator of a research project that aims to evaluate a decision aid for advanced prostate cancer patients and their support persons that is designed to facilitate decisions about treatment that affect quality of life.  His enthusiasm for his work and his insights into preparation for a scientific career after life at H-SC were both inspirational and informative to students and faculty alike.  Dr. Jones is the embodiment of “the Hampden-Sydney man,” and his endless successes are proof that “you really can do anything with a degree from Hampden-Sydney!”

Nick Bowling ’12 is spending the Spring 2010 semester at the Duke Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, taking several courses and working on independent research that involves polymerization of barnacle glues on hard substrates and the adverse coagulative compounds used to prevent them from taking hold. This research has many applications such as removing barnacles from boat hulls and preventing them from taking hold in the first place.

Nick has also been involved with week-long travel courses offered through the Duke Marine Lab. He went to Singapore for an Urban Tropical Ecology course, then to Trinidad for a course on the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles. One of the highlights of Nick’s field expedition in Trinidad involved nesting leatherback sea turtles, shown here.

Nesting sea turtles in Trinidad

"You can go anywhere with a degree from Hampden-Sydney College"

Chad Pleasants ’10 delivered his senior honors presentation on April 6 at the Parents and Friends Lounge at H-SC.  In the public talk, Chad detailed his independent research work done on how certain proteins in the nuclear membrane of budding yeast cells may play a part in regulating cell cell cycle progression. Congratulations to Chad on the successful completion of his thesis work!

Chad presenting his project at the public Honors symposium

The Biology Department was pleased to welcome back C. Corey van Vlymen ’08 to give a department seminar on his graduate thesis research being performed at Old Dominion University and Eastern Virginia Medical School.  Mr. van Vlymen’s research deals with epigenetics, an emerging field that considers how genes are regulated once mRNA transcription is complete.  Epigenetics work of the type being conducted by Mr. van Vlymen is instrumental in understanding how diseases such as cancer can develop over time in the human body. Following the talk, a brief discussion was held about the graduate school experience, including how to prepare and what to expect in terms of workload and daily life.  Mr. van Vlymen will complete his master’s degree from ODU this May and anticipates starting medical school this coming fall.

Mr. van Vlymen presents his research

You might not think there would be much active plant life in Ireland this time of year, especially after the hardest, snowiest, coldest winter in Europe in many years.  But Dr. Shear found a few examples.  The hills around Dublin Bay had some blooming gorse, shown in the photo below.  Gorse is an incredibly aggressive, very spiny plant that is native to Ireland but has taken over many acres as forests were reduced.

Even in Temple Bar, Dublin’s “Fun Centre,” an organization called Guerrilla Gardening had brightened the scene by planting primroses in a pothole where some cobblestones had broken away.

Things were better at the Royal Botanical Garden, where the colorful bark of an Arbutus tree gave some relief from gray skies.

In the famous Curvilinear Conservatory, tropical Rhododendrons were in full bloom.  Unlike our native species, these Rhododendrons from southeast Asia grow as epiphytes, rooting in moss on the trunks of trees.

Recently, Chad Pleasants ’10 presented his senior thesis research at the Southeast Regional Yeast Meeting at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. He presented a poster depicting work he has done with Professor Mike Wolyniak on how the cell cycle is regulated in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The meeting was attended by yeast researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates from colleges around the southeast, including Vanderbilt and Emory. By conducting research in simple organisms like yeast, scientists hope to better understand how processes like cell division occur in higher organisms, including humans. Chad is currently writing his senior thesis to earn department Honors.

Chad and his poster

Chad presenting his project

The Clinton Oval Office

The Clinton saxophone collection

Students currently enrolled in Biology 401 – Immunology are conducting research on the induction of dendritic cell maturation by Toll-like receptor ligands.  A major theme throughout the Immunology course is the phenomenon of antigen-antibody interactions, including their applications to many areas of immunologic research.  During the last two weeks of laboratory work, Dr. Kristian Hargadon has introduced students to MACS technology.  MACS, or magnetic activated cell sorting, is a widely used technique in many immunology research laboratories that allows one to isolate specific populations of cells from a complex mixture of cells.  The technology relies on the use of antibodies that recognize molecules uniquely expressed by certain cell types.  These antibodies are coupled to magnetic beads and bind to a single cell type in a mixture of diverse cells.  Following this antigen:antibody interaction, the mixture of cells is placed in a column within a magnetic field, where only those cells bound by the magnetic antibody are retained.  Unwanted cells pass through the column, leaving one with the desired cell type in a very pure form.  At H-SC, Immunology students are using this technology to isolate dendritic cells from the mouse spleen.  While this organ contains anywhere from 100-200 million cells, including B cells, T cells, macrophages, dendritic cells, etc., the students have successfully isolated 4-6 million dendritic cells per spleen in a highly pure population from this mixture.  Upon isolating these cells, students are designing their own research projects to analyze the behavior of these splenic dendritic cells in response to exposure to Toll-like receptor ligands.  We will keep you posted on their progress!

Dr. Hargadon demonstrating MACS technology to Immunology students

 

A MACS Cell Separator

Dr. Goodman and 3 students from the Herpetology BIO 385 class recently attended the annual Southeastern Partners in Amphibian & Reptile Conservation meeting. The SEPARC meeting was held during Feb 18-21 at Camp Ocala in the Ocala National Forest, Florida. We got to see some great talks and posters, network with scientists and conservation practitioners, attend workshops, and more…

Our rustic cabins with … Bunks!

We got to take canoes out on Sellars Lake, which is right next to the campground

Lots of great research posters and local species of herps to learn about (baby gopher tortoise here).

Crocodile hunters!!  Allen Luck, Sam Smith, Dr. Rachel Goodman

Sam Smith, Allen Luck, Dr. Rachel Goodman, Erica Rutherford

We also took a short detour to see a large group of manatees that comes into a natural hot spring to warm up in this chilly weather. The count that day was 176, up from only a dozen before the area was protected in the 1970’s. Definitely worth the trip to Blue Spring National Park– a must if you’re near Orlando!  We were close enough to touch them, though we didn’t (see sign on below-left; below-right photo source: USFWS Digital Library).

Dr. Bill Shear has been making regular visits to the Biology Department at East Carolina University to use their scanning electron microscope.  The scope is overseen by Dr. Jason Bond, with whom Dr. Shear shares an NSF grant to study the systematic biology of millipedes.  Because the SEM uses a beam of electrons instead of light, it can magnify images many, many times more than a light microscope, which is limited by the wavelength of visible light.  Processors in the SEM transduce the reflected electron beams into visible light displayed on a computer monitor, and the images can be saved electronically. The enormous magnification possible is revealing bizarre surface structures in arthropods, the significance of which remains unclear.  Are these features adaptive, or are they simply the structural consequences of the process by which the cuticle is constructed?

In the picture below, we are looking at the tarsus (tip segment) of the third leg of a male millipede, belonging to an undescribed genus and species.  All of the spiny structures are sense organs, as is the pit with perforations in its floor.  How many different ones can you find?  We can hypothesize that each of them gathers unique information.  Since these sensors do not occur in the females, it seems likely they have something to do with the male’s sex life, but exactly what may never be known.  The whole animal is only about 7 mm long.