The Biology Undergraduate Awards Committee met last week to select this year’s Awardees. It was a tough task and required much deliberation, as all of the students did an outstanding job. Here are the awards recipients:

Kylie VanDerMolen has been awarded the Francis LeClair Award. This award is given to a senior biology major for research and academic excellence in biology with an emphasis on plant sciences. VanDerMolen was mentored by Zack Nimchuk and her thesis is called “Natural variability in clv2 phenotypes.” Congratulations, Kylie!

Sloan Fussell and Viren Baharani were awarded the Stephen Brantley Awards. These awards are given to two senior biology majors for excellence in research in molecular, cell, and developmental Biology. Fussell was mentored by Alexander Kabanov and he completed his thesis on macrophage polarization and drug delivery. Baharani was mentored by Helen Lazear and completed his thesis on viral cross-reactivity. Congratulations, Sloan and Viren!

Sebastian Nichols has been awarded the RE Coker Award. This award is given to a senior biology major for excellence in research in organismal biology and ecology. Nichols was mentored by Brian Taylor and his thesis is called “Bioinspired Navigation Based on Distributed Sensing in the Leech.” Congratulations, Sebastian!

Dan Meyers was awarded the John Couch Award. This award is given to a senior biology major with interests in plant biology or mycology who has demonstrated the highest ideals of scholarship and research. Meyers was mentored by NCBG Herbarium Associate “Van” Cotter. Congratulations, Dan!

Mark Peifer and the Biology Department gives special thanks to Amy Maddox who mentored the students writing and defending Undergraduate Honors theses, all faculty, students, and postdocs who mentored research students this year, all who evaluated written theses and talks, the Biology Undergraduate Awards Committee (Amy Maddox, Ty Hedrick, Gidi Shemer, and Steve Rogers), and, of course, Summer Montgomery who manages all things undergraduate and whose help and guidance makes our major run.

Congratulations, Gladfelter Lab!
The Feature, titled “Filamentous fungus Ashbya gossypii” describes one of the Gladfelter Lab’s videos that shows a “busy structure with wavy, thin branches dotted with sparkling pearls” (pictured right).
Ashbya gossypii is among the fungi that the Gladfelter lab studies. It’s a plant pathogen that’s closely related to the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a well-known model organism.
You can view the feature here.

Eric Hastie and Laura Ott awarded funding by UNC IAH for their TikTok Biology @ UNC project!
For this project, they will examine the implementation of the new #Learnon TikTok approach to teaching 2 courses – BIOL 101H and BIOL 205 in fall 2021. Students in these courses will develop new TikTok videos, covering core biological concepts that serve as a foundation for students’ experiences within the biology major. They will assess if student access to/watching of these TikTok videos promotes student learning.

Professor Bob Goldstein’s screen-printing has been featured on the UNC College of Arts & Science’s website! From the article: “Professor Bob Goldstein began making gig posters to advertise biologists giving on-campus talks about their research in 2004. Since then, he’s made about 100 of them, fusing his love of art and science.” Read the full feature here.

Professor Jeff Dangl has been awarded the 2021 Martin Gibbs Medal of the American Society of Plant Biologists!

The Martin Gibbs Medal was instituted by the Society’s executive committee in 1993 to honor Martin Gibbs, editor of Plant Physiology from 1963 to 1992. The Gibbs Medal is presented biennially to an individual who has pioneered advances that have served to establish new directions of investigation in the plant sciences.

Congratulations!!!

Nicholas Colaianni, Ph.D. student in the Dangl lab, collaborates with researchers at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) of Molecular Plant Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) for back-to-back papers in Cell Host & Microbe. From the article, the researchers “use two complementary approaches to unveil a co-evolutionary mechanism between bacteria and plants and also explain complex immune response patterns observed in the wild. Together the papers change the way scientists have been thinking about the relationship of a bacterial antigenic component with its plant immune receptor.” Congratulations to the Dangl lab and Nicholas!

According to his profile on the Dangl lab’s website, Nick is “interested in understanding how bacterial communities interact with their plant hosts. Currently, I am working on understanding how plants respond to a diverse set of bacterially derived proteins. I am also working on computational pipelines to utilize shotgun metagenomic sequencing data in our understanding of the important functional differences between microbial communities.”

Read about the article on Eureka Alert and Phys.org!

Greg Copenhaver has been appointed as the new Senior Associate Dean for Research & Innovations for the UNC College of Arts & Sciences, effective July 1st. Congratulations to Greg!

From Dean Terry Rhodes:
“Greg will bring a wealth of experience to this role. A member of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty since 2001, he shares joint appointments as a professor in the department of biology and the Integrative Program for Biological and Genome Sciences (IBGS). He also served on committees that led to the formation of the College’s Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship. He has taught in the program since 2008. In addition, he is affiliated with the UNC Center for Bioethics, the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the curriculum in genetics. He has also made important contributions to science outside the university setting and has experience launching a startup: Prior to joining the university, he co-founded and grew a biotechnology company and has been at the forefront of promoting open-access science by serving as editor-in-chief at PLOS Genetics.

Greg’s scholarly work explores chromosome structure and dynamics in the processes that give rise to reproductive cells. His research relies heavily on genetic and genomic approaches to yield insights into how genes are inherited between generations. His research group’s work has used many model species including fungi, plants and animals and currently emphasizes plant biology with the broad aim of improving global food security.

In 2019 he received a Breakthrough Technology Award from the National Science Foundation and in 2020 he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Greg received his B.S. from the University of California Riverside, his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago.
As associate dean for research and innovation, Greg will be responsible for developing and implementing research and innovation strategies for the College and supporting leadership and faculty to enhance the College’s research and scholarship portfolio. As a member of my senior leadership team, he will provide executive management advice to the interdisciplinary research and scholarship enterprises within the College, working with the senior associate deans, the faculty director of convergent science, UNC Research, the vice chancellor for research, Innovate Carolina and other units throughout the University.”

Congratulations to Dr. Maria Servedio, elected as the 2023 President of American Society of Naturalists!

ASN is a membership society whose goal is to advance and to diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences. Maria’s leadership exemplifies her dedication and reputation as a biologist. ASN will be as fortunate as we are to have her among UNC Biology Faculty!

Below are recent publications by members of the Bloom Lab. Undergraduate researchers/authors are in bold.

He, Y.; Lawrimore, J.; Cook, D.; Van Gorder, E.E.; De Larminat, S.C.; Adalsteinsson, D.; Forest, MG; Bloom, K. (2020) Statistical mechanics of chromosomes: In vivo and in silico approaches reveal high-level organization and structure arise exclusively through mechanical feedback between loop extruders and chromatin substrate properties Nucleic Acids Res Nov 18;48(20):11284-11303 NAR-01822-N-2020.R2 doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa871

An in silico study that shows mechanical feedback between condensin and histones as they interact on chromatin with our collaborators in Applied Math and two of Biology’s undergraduates, Solenn De Larminat and Elizabeth Van Gorder.

Mishra, P., Chakraborty, A., Yeh, E., Feng, W., Bloom, K.S. and Basrai, M.A. (2021) R-loops at centromeric chromatin contribute to defects in kinetochore integrity and chromosomal instability in budding yeast Mol Biol Cell Jan 1;32(1):74-89. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E20-06-0379

A study showing R-loops at the yeast centromere and its function in kinetochore integrity with our collaborators at NIH

Kefer, P., Iqbal, F., Locatelli, M., Lawrimore, J., Zhang, M. Bloom, K., Bonin, K., Liu, J., Vidi, P-A. (2021) Performance of deep learning restoration methods for the extraction of particle dynamics in noisy microscopy image sequences. Mol Biol Cell Jan 27:mbcE20110689. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E20-11-0689.

A quantitative analysis tool using artificial intelligence methods with our collaborators at Wake Forest University

Cook, D., Long, S., Stanton, J., Cusick, P., Lawrimore, C., Yeh, E., Grant, S. and Bloom, K. (2021) Behavior of Dicentric Chromosomes in Budding Yeast. PLOS Genetics (accepted) PGENETICS-D-20-00674R2

A study showing differential repair pathways for dicentric chromosomes depending on the position of the two centromeres. This study stemmed from a CURE course Bio 423 taught by Dr. Sarah Grant. The two undergraduates in the class, John Stanton and Patrick Cusick worked in Dr. Bloom’s lab as post-bacs to finish up the experiments.

Lawrimore, J., Kolbin, D., Stanton, J., Khan, Muznah, De Larminat, S., Lawrimore, C., Yeh, E., Bloom, K. (2021) The rDNA is Biomolecular Condensate Formed by Polymer-Polymer Phase Separation and is Sequestered in the Nucleolus by Transcription and R-loops. Nucl. Acids Res. (accepted).

A study demonstrating the role of transcription and R-loops in preventing rDNA demixing from the liquid phase of the nucleolus. The study was initiated by a quantitative Biology undergraduate student, Muznah Khan, with assistance from two undergraduates, John Stanton and Solenn De Larminat.

Dr. Jiyue (Jeff) Huang a postdoctoral associate in the Copenhaver lab has published a paper in BMC Genomics entitled “Comparative transcriptomic analysis of thermally stressed Arabidopsis thaliana meiotic recombination mutants” together with our colleagues from Fudan University in Shanghai. Congratulations, Dr. Huang! The paper explores how elevated environmental temperatures influence gene expression in the reproductive cells of plants. The research provides insights into how meiosis works and is also relevant for understanding how plants respond to climate stress.

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-021-07497-2