Volume 5, Issue 3 March 2008

Doane professor receives award from NSF  Andrea Holmes, Ph.D., started her research with $5,000 and some borrowed pipettes.  The Doane College chemistry professor recycled almost all of her materials to avoid buying new equipment and employed undergraduate students to work in her lab at minimum wage.  Now, with a $525,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Dr. Holmes has neon colored pipette holders, fresh materials and her undergrads get $10 an hour.  “Our work will really take off now,” Dr. Holmes said.  Every year the NSF selects nominees for the Presidential Early Career Awards.  This year, Dr. Holmes received the United States government’s highest honor given to scientists and engineers believed to “show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge,” as stated on the government Web site.  Other recipients of the award are from Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Purdue universities.  “I still can’t believe it,” Dr. Holmes said. “Typically you have to submit a proposal three or four times before you get it. We got this grant on our first try.”  What Dr. Holmes proposes to do with 

the $525,000 awarded to her by the NSF is develop molecular sensors that change color in the presence of small quantities of illegal drugs.  Her ultimate goal is to develop a tool kit that police, forensic investigators or others could use to test for illegal substances.  “The cool thing about our proposal is there is one sensor we developed to test for methamphetamines,” Dr. Holmes said. “It turns out there are two forms, one found in over-the-counter vapor rubs and the illegal variety. Until now, there was 

no way to distinguish between the two so easily.”  With the help of undergraduate students, Dr. Holmes was able to figure out a way to distinguish between the legal and illegal varieties.  “Using a circular dichroism spectrometer and polarized light we were able to distinguish between the illegal meth and the pharmaceutical compound,” said Katie Wilcox, a BRIN scholar in the INBRE program and a biology major at Doane College, who is working on the project.  Dr. Holmes said that without INBRE’s support her lab would never have made the discovery because INBRE provided the funding to buy the technology.  “INBRE also provided the summer salaries for Katie and another INBRE scholar, Christa Flitcroft, whose work was critical in helping me with this research,” she said, “that ultimately led to our getting the NSF grant.”  One of the goals of the INBRE program is to support junior faculty and position them to perform cutting edge research.  “Dr. Holmes represents a major success as an INBRE faculty member,” said James Turpen, Ph.D., director of the program. “Not only is she doing cutting-edge research, she has obtained independent competitive federal funding to support that research.”  The award indicates that Dr. Holmes is one of the best young scientists in the nation, he said.

Katie Wilcox, a senior at Doane College and a BRIN scholar, is one of many under-graduate students Dr. Holmes has working in her lab.

Andrea Holmes, Ph.D.

The Nebraska INBRE is funded through a grant from National Center for Research Resources, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

Participating Ph.D.-granting institutions:University of Nebraska Medical Center,Creighton University, University of Ne-braska-Lincoln.

Participating undergraduate institutions:the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, theUniversity of Nebraska at Omaha, theUniversity of Nebraska at Kearney, Creighton University, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Chadron State College, Doane College, Wayne State College, Little Priest Tribal College and Western Nebraska Community College.

www.unmc.edu/inbre

Director: Jim Turpen, Ph.D. jturpen@unmc.edu

Grant coordinator: Penni Davis pkdavis@unmc.edu 402.559.3316

Program coordinator:William Chaney,Ph.D.wchaney@unmc.edu

Editor:Lisa SpellmanUNMC Public Affairs402.559.4693

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Marcus Hatfield is a numbers guy.   So much so that he has memorized 200 decimal places of the irrational number Pi, which has a decimal expansion that never ends or repeats.  The 23-year-old senior majoring in biochemistry, molecular biology and mathematics at Nebraska Wesleyan University (NWU) hopes to commit to memory 314 decimal places by Pi Day, which fittingly falls on March 14 or 3/14.   “I love math; it’s my passion,” said Hatfield, who also is the president of the math club at NWU. “I like to apply it to science.” A native of Westminster, Colo., Hatfield elected to enroll at NWU in Lincoln, as the college was one of only 13 schools offering a master’s program in forensic science.  “At the time, I was interested in forensic science, but that interest faded when I started enjoying science and math that I decided to get a Ph.D.,” he said.  With no interest in medical school, Hatfield applied to be a BRIN Scholar in order to learn more about cutting-edge biomedical research being done in Nebraska.   After being accepted, he was paired with his mentor, Sandor Lovas, Ph.D., the core director and professor in the department of biomedical sciences at Creighton University. Hatfield spent the summers of 2006 and 2007 working under Dr. Lovas, an expert in structural proteomics and the relationships of cancer promoting peptides.  “I felt welcome right at the start,” Hatfield said. “Dr. Lovas helped me get prepared to do my project, but then left me to do the majority of my research with his post doctoral and Ph.D. students.” Hatfield said Dr. Lovas was always there for him if he needed help, but allowed him to be independent in his research. Hatfields’s research focused on computer protein modeling using quantum chemical methods to determine the stability of the folded structures of proteins.  He continued to do his research at NWU during the academic year.

Marcus Hatfield displays an image of the TC5b protein he researched as a 2006 BRIN scholar. A senior at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Hatfield already has been published as the primary author of two articles.

  Understanding how proteins fold is one of the holy grails of modern science, Hatfield said, because the structure of proteins determines their function. “I have learned a lot,” Hatfield said of his multiple projects through the INBRE program.   “It has been great to get the research opportunity. That has helped in learning the material for other classes and with giving presentations. Overall, it has been a great experience.” When he graduates in May, Hatfield plans to attend graduate school at Creighton University and continue working with Dr. Lovas on his research.  Hatfield said he believes his experience and connections from the BRIN scholar program will help him achieve that goal.   While some scholars are co-authors on scientific publications at the time of their graduation from the INBRE program, Hatfield’s claim to fame is that he is the primary author of not one, but two publications.   “Being the primary author on two papers is very rare for an undergraduate,” Hatfield said.

BRIN scholar among few undergraduates to publish research

3

Creighton Arts and Sciences

•Rachel Patterson - winner of the biology department’s Best Student Research Presentation.•Natalie German - Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Scholarship for Women in Science.

University of Nebraska at Kearney

•Christine Gilling - first place award for Science Excellence, Sigma Xi Annual Research Conference in Orlando, Fla.•Scott Griffith - Meyers Homestead Preserve Award for Best Undergraduate Research Presentation.•Kim Carlson, Ph.D. (faculty) - The College of Natural and Social Sciences Outstanding Student Research Mentor.

Nebraska Wesleyan University

•Angela McKinney-Williams, Ph.D. (faculty) - 2007 Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) Faculty for the 21st century Fellow

University of Nebraska at Omaha

•Stephanie Brady - The Iowa-Nebraska Physiological Society- second place in undergraduate poster presentation

University of Nebraska Medial Center

•Ethan Mann, graduate student and former BRIN scholar - American Heart Association Fellowship

INBRE program receives a scientific boost  Thanks to external funding from the U.S. Department of Education for Graduate Training in Structural Biology and Biophysics, a revolutionary research area is being added to the INBRE program.  Structural biologywill be directed by Gloria Borgstahl, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UNMC.   The grant also allows for graduate student fellowships in the field of structural biology and biophysics.  To help explain what structural biology is, Dr. Borgstahl uses a car analogy.  “If you bring your car to the mechanic and say it’s making a funny noise, it helps if the mechanic knows what the engine looks like,” she said. “In structural biology, if you know what the biological structure of a molecule looks like, then you can actually design therapeutic drugs that might inhibit or activate that molecule.”  This already has been done with several non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs for diseases like arthritis.  “It would be a dream if we were 

fortunate enough to solve a structure and design a drug using our data that would help with cancer chemotherapies,” Dr. Borgstahl said.  To determine the structure-function relationship, Dr. Borgstahl’s lab uses the X-ray crystallography method, which is a subset of biophysics. By crystallizing a protein and shooting it with X-rays, researchers can observe the structure of a molecule.  Structural biology is fundamental to the future of science because there is only structure/function information on 1/10 of macromolecules at this time, she said.  Dr. Borgstahl said a primary mission of her lab is to train students in structural biology, including BRIN scholars, graduate students and those enrolled in the new fellowship program of structural biology and biophysics.  As someone who has had BRIN scholars in her lab in the past, Dr. Borgstahl believes both the inexperienced and the skilled have a lot to gain from the INBRE program.  It’s a positive experience for the undergraduates to see the process of what researchers are doing firsthand and it’s good for graduate students to teach the undergrads, because then they feel more confident, she said.  “If you can explain something to someone else, then you know it,” Dr. 

Borgstahl said.  It’s something Dr. Borgstahl knows all too well after serving as an assistant professor at the University of Toledo from 1996-2002 following the completion of her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and graduate degree and Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Iowa.  James Turpen, Ph.D., director of the INBRE program, is happy to have Dr. Borgstahl on board as the scientific director of an incredibly high-tech research area.  “Dr. Borgstahl has already proven to be a mentor to graduate students,” he said. “Having this focus area just gives us another way to bring people with similar interests together. The fellowships also will be an important contribution and great addition and expansion to INBRE.”  When Dr. Borgstahl isn’t in her lab on the 10th floor of the Lied Transplant Center studying structural biology, the Dubuque, Iowa, native is riding her bike, and not just down the street.  This summer, Borgstahl will ride in her sixth RAGBRAI, an annual 500-mile, seven-day bike ride across the state of Iowa.  Dr. Borgstahl and her children, ages 9 and 12, ride RAGBRAI together every year. Their group name: Team Cell.

Honors and awards

Gloria Borgstahl, PhD

NON-PROFITU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDOmaha, NebraskaPERMIT NO. 454

Nebraska INBRE Administrative OfficeUniversity of Nebraska Medical Center986395 Nebraska Medical CenterOmaha, NE 68198-6395Programs promote INBRE on a national level  I would like to discuss two items of interest that are happening at the national level as it relates to our program.  First, as many of you know, the second biannual national IDeA meeting will be held in Washington, D.C., Aug. 6-8.   This symposium will bring together IDeA program participants to showcase their accomplishments, exchange ideas, foster collaborations, encourage educational opportunities and demonstrate the program’s progress in developing biomedical resources and research capacity in IDeA states.  There also will be opportunities to participate in strategic planning sessions to further develop, improve and grow the IDeA program.   At this symposium there will be scientific sessions and poster presentations highlighting areas of research supported by IDeA’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) and Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence 

(INBRE), as well as technical and administrative sessions and workshops.  

  Nebraska will be well represented with both students and faculty in attendance.  In another development, Charles Wood, Ph.D., from the Nebraska 

Center for Virology (CoBRE), and I attended an organizational meeting in January to discuss the formation of an IDeA Principal Investigator Association.     As envisioned, this association  will have representatives from both the INBRE and CoBRE programs from the IDeA states and Puerto Rico.    The mission of the association will be to provide leadership and communication 

for the development, promotion and improvement of biomedical research in the IDeA programs. The association will seek to foster interactions within the IDeA community, promote resource sharing, enhance the visibility of the IDeA programs, look at priorities and new directions, and develop strategies to achieve the common goals of the IDeA programs.  We hope to work closely with the EPSCOR Coalition and the EPSCOR Foundation, as well as the program officers at the National Center for Research Resources in the advancement of these goals.     The IDeA program is having a significant impact on the development of the research capacity here in Nebraska and it is essential that we articulate our successes and work to maintain the viability of this valuable program.   As you can see from the highlights of this issue of INROADS, both our faculty and students are doing exceptionally well.

James Turpen, Ph.D.