UNC Biology’s Alan Weakley has been featured in an NYTimes story called, “How Many Plants Have We Wiped Out? Here Are 5 Extinction Stories.” Weakley’s extinction story focuses on large-flowered Barbara’s-buttons, a plant native to two western counties in North Carolina, which had been mistaken for a different species for the majority of its existence.

Read more here: https://nyti.ms/353pWT0

From the website: “Phi Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most honored college honorary society, has inducted 194 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students as new members. Friday’s induction ceremony featured remarks by Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and a keynote address by biology Teaching Associate Professor Gidi Shemer.”

Biology majors inducted include:
Olivia Faye Madalone
Laura Ellen Crook
Matthew Russell Mueller
Joseph William Coggin
Grace Lane Fulton Henley
Forrest Jefferson Bell
Joseph Vincent Osti III
Sage Lee Atkins
Lacy Henry Bryant III
John Kwiatkowski III
Alexandros Mixail Pistiolis
Kassidy Jyll Blankenship
Dan James Meyers
Ceren Onasci
Fiona Jane Wissink
Deep Upadhyay
Renee Kate Li
Nikolas James Tsiouplis
BrianPaul Robert
Sydney A. Thai
Ahmed Abdelkarem Belghith
Henry Bolling Williamson
Mahler Carew Revsine
Jorge Ricardo Santana

See the full list here: https://uncnews.unc.edu/2020/10/19/unc-chapel-hill-inducts-194-students-into-phi-beta-kappa/

Congratulations to Daniel Matute and the Matute Lab for their feature in the Carolina Arts & Sciences Magazine! The article focuses on “Resilient Mindsets,” in organisms and in humans. From the article: “Finding answers to big questions about evolution requires a particular mindset. For biologist Daniel Matute, that mindset includes a trait often found in our planet’s hardiest organisms: resiliency.”

Read the article here: https://magazine.college.unc.edu/news-article/resilient-mindsets/

The NYTimes has a really beautiful article by Carl Zimmer about SARS-CoV-2 viral structure, and it includes some of the recent phase separation work from Amy Gladfelter’s lab, plus a video by Dr. Gladfelter’s postdoctoral student Christine Roden, and some quotes from Dr. Gladfelter.

Here’s the story:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-unveiled.html

And the recent preprint on this by Christiane Iserman, others in Amy’s lab, and collaborators:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.11.147199v1

Congratulations to the Microbiome Team in the Dangl-Grant lab led by Omri Finkel, Isai Salas Gonzalez, Gabriel Castrillo and Jonathan Conway on the publication of a paper in Nature titled ‘A single bacterial genus maintains root growth in a complex microbiome.’ This paper is a detective story that led to the discovery that a single bacterial genus acts as a multispecies regulator of the the effects of plant microbiota on root development. Variovorax are very commonly enriched in roots of various plants and directly regulate the effects of the bacterially-produced plant growth regulator auxin.

Read the paper here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2778-7

Dr. Kelly Hogan, Teaching Professor in the Department of Biology is the recipient of this year’s National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) Teaching Award! NABT awards recognize teachers for their expertise in specific subject areas, for contributions to the profession made by new teachers, and to recognize service to NABT, life science teaching, or leadership in learning communities.

Please join the department in congratulating Kelly for the incredible impact she has on her students, our department, and UNC. In Kelly’s own words, “One teacher can make a difference. One teacher can help invite more students into a discipline. One teacher can help retain a more diverse group of scientists in their discipline. One teacher can help graduate a more diverse group of scientists. It begins with an inclusive mindset around course structure and facilitation.”

Esteban Agudo, a Biology graduate student in John Bruno’s lab, has been featured in Endeavors!

From his website, Agudo is “a marine ecologist interested in exploring how environmental characteristics (i.e. temperature, structural complexity) affect reef communities. [He] believe[s] cultivating our knowledge of these relationship[s] will help us better understand both, how these systems are entangled with one another, and how each respond to current developments of global change.”

Take a moment to read about Esteban’s journey in his research here: https://endeavors.unc.edu/esteban-agudo/.

From Academia to Industry: Q&A with Cellular Analysis Specialist Dr. Rob Peterson – Sponsored by UNC oSTEM

Do you want an insider view of life after undergrad? What about graduate school? Are you curious about biology jobs outside of medicine and academia?

Join oSTEM UNC and chat with Dr. Rob Peterson, a cellular analysis specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Dr. Peterson earned his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology, worked as an Assistant Professor at UNC, ran a microscopy core facility, and now works in the microscopy industry. Join us to learn about pursuing a career in STEM!

Where: Zoom https://unc.zoom.us/j/95213680222
When: September 30th, 7:30-8:30pm

Congratulations to Dr. Zhenyu Hao (a postdoc in Dr. Darrel Stafford’s Lab), whose paper titled, “Gamma-glutamyl carboxylase mutations differentially affect the biological function of vitamin K-dependent proteins”, was recently published in the journal, Blood. In this paper, Dr. Hao evaluated how carboxylase mutations affected the biological function of proteins involved in blood coagulation, vascular calcification, and bone metabolism. Read more >>

Article link: https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/doi/10.1182/blood.2020006329/461789/Gamma-glutamyl-carboxylase-mutations

Congratulations to Celia Shiau and her lab researchers Alison Earley and Victoria Kwon and former lab members on their paper published in eLife. The article is titled “Drainage of inflammatory macromoleules from the brain to periphery targets the liver for macrophage infiltration.”

From the abstract, “Many brain pathologies are associated with liver damage, but a direct link has long remained elusive. Here, we establish a new paradigm for interrogating brain-periphery interactions by leveraging zebrafish for its unparalleled access to the intact whole animal for in vivo analysis in real time after triggering focal brain inflammation. Using traceable lipopolysaccharides (LPS), we reveal that drainage of these inflammatory macromolecules from the brain led to a strikingly robust peripheral infiltration of macrophages into the liver independent of Kupffer cells. We further demonstrate that this macrophage recruitment requires signaling from the cytokine IL-34 and Toll-like receptor adaptor MyD88, and occurs in coordination with neutrophils. These results highlight the possibility for circulation of brain-derived substances to serve as a rapid mode of communication from brain to the liver. Understanding how the brain engages the periphery at times of danger may offer new perspectives for detecting and treating brain pathologies.”

Read the full article here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/58191.