Associate Professor Donald Cheney presented an invited talk entitled “Development of a TNT- Detoxifying Strain of the Seaweed Porphyra yezoensis Through Genetic Engineering” at the Annual Meeting of the Phycological Society of America held in Williamsburg, VA, from August 7-12. The talk was co-authored by GSAS student Paula Bernasconi and describes their recent success in expressing a bacterial gene in the seaweed Porphyra and enabling it to completely remove the explosive compound TNT from seawater and detoxify it. In related work, Matz Biotechnology Co-op undergraduate student Jacquelyn Jordan is working in the Cheney lab this summer on developing seaweed strains that can detoxify another dangerous toxic pollutant in marine waters, PCBs.

GSAS student Paula Bernasconi received the "Best Student Poster" Award and a $500 prize at the 20th Annual International Conference on Contaminated Soils, Sediments and Water, held Oct. 18–21 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.   Her poster, co-authored by Associate Professor Donald Cheney, was entitled "Development of a genetically engineered seaweed that can detoxify TNT in marine waters." This conference is one of the largest international meetings of academics and industry interested in environmental pollution and had over 120 posters.

Professor William Detrich attended the 6th International Conference on Zebrafish Development and Genetics, held in Madison, Wisconsin, from July 29th-August 2nd.  He also attended the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's Open Science Conference, held in Bremen, Germany, from July 26th-28th.  At the conference he presented two talks, "Antarctic and Arctic Biology in the Genomic Era," and "Discovery of bloodthristy, a Tripartite Motif (TRIM) Gene Required for Erythropoiesis, by Comparative Genomics." 

Professor Detrich’s ICEFISH 2004 expedition has been widely documented during this past summer. Professor Detrich, the Chief Scientist of the ICEFISH 2004 Cruise, and his team of 31 participating scientists arrived in Cape Town, South Africa on July 17th, to terminate the 61-day expedition, conducted on board the Research Vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer.  The ICEFISH2004 Cruise, which Professor Detrich developed as an International Collaborative Expedition to collect and study Fish Indigenous to Sub-antarctic Habitats, was extremely successful in its goal to perform the first comprehensive international survey of the fishes and benthic invertebrates of the Sub-Antarctic marine habitat.

Thirty-two researchers from eight countries (the USA, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom) collected specimens of lower-latitude fishes and invertebrates in order to relate the evolution, physiology, biochemistry and population dynamics of high-latitude Antarctic fish and invertebrate species to the transitional fish and invertebrate fauna of the Sub-Antarctic.  Eight students from four countries, including Ms. Catherine Cornell of NU, were part of the complement of scientists.

The cruise departed from Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 17th to fish the Burdwood Bank, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, Bouvetoya Island, and Tristan da Cunha.  The furthest southern latitude achieved was 59° in the South Sandwiches, where the Palmer encountered substantial winter pack ice.  The progress of the cruise could be viewed on the ICEFISH Cruise web site, www.icefish.neu.edu.  The ICEFISH site was developed through a strong collaboration between Professor Detrich, his Technician Sandra Parker, and Alicia Russell, Deanna Brown, Cathy Mccarron, and Katelynn O’Brien of the Educational Technology Center.  The expedition was also featured in a June 29 story in The Boston Globe’s Health & Science section.

The scientists on the cruise also contributed to a major educational outreach program that was incorporated into the curricula of K-12 classes of the participating countries.  Educational content appropriate to different age groups was developed by members of the EdTech Center and the Dept. of Biology.  Through a special “Ask a Scientist a Question” section of the web site, the students engaged the biologists in active discussion regarding the science being conducted, how one became a polar marine biologist, etc.

The work performed on the ICEFISH Cruise, and subsequently in the laboratories of the team’s biologists, will contribute to development of a baseline understanding of these sensitive ecosystems, one against which future changes in species distribution and survival may be evaluated judiciously.

Associate Professor Slava Epstein (& Marine Science Center) and 6 postdoctoral fellows and GSAS students attended the 10th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology, held in Cancun, Mexico from August 22nd–27th.  Collectively, they presented at this meeting 10 papers, including 4 invited oral presentations.  This level of participation placed NU in the top 1% of the best-represented institutions at this world’s largest gathering of environmental microbiologists.

Assistant Professor Valentin Ilyin and GSAS Biology PhD Students Alper Uzun, Alex Abyzov, Chesley Leslin, and postdoctoral fellow Mounir Errami presented two posters at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Annual Meeting and 8th International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) Conference held in Boston from June 12th-16th.

1. Mounir Errami, Alexej Abyzov, Valentin A. Ilyin. "A Fast Topological Method for the Blind Comparison of All-atom Protein Surfaces."
2. Alper Uzun, Chesley Leslin, Valentin A. Ilyin. "StSNP: Structure SNP, A Database for Mapping Nonsnynonymous SNPs Onto Spatial Structures of Proteins."

GSAS students Vibha Ahuja and Emily Hart and Susan Powers-Lee, Professor and Chair delivered two presentations at the July meeting of the International Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

1. Ahuja, V., and Powers-Lee, S.G. “Recombinant expression of Polymorphic Forms of Human Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase,” FASEB J. 18, 15.32 (2004).
2. Hart, E.J., and Powers-Lee, S.G. “Probing the Glutamine Site of Escherichia coli Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase,” FASEB J. 18, 15.33 (2004).

Professor Kim Lewis convened a session on "Programmed Death and Survival in Microorganisms" at the Annual Meeting for Microbiology held in New Orleans, Louisiana from May 23rd –27th.  He also presented a talk on "Regulated Cell Death and Survival of Biofilms in Response to Cidal Antibiotics". GSAS students from the Lewis lab, Iris Keren, Devang Shah, and Amy Spoering presented a poster on "Persister Cells and Survival of Bacterial Populations", and Michael Lafleur presented a poster on "Programmed Cell Death in Yeast."  

Professor Lewis also participated in the Department of Energy (DOE) Review Panel for the Microbial Genome Program that was held from June 2nd –3rd in Washington, DC.

Professor Kim Lewis presented two invited talks at the Annual Interscience Conference for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) held October 30th -November 2nd in Washington, DC.  They were entitled “Functions of MDR Pumps and Drug Discovery” and “The Mechanism of Biofilm Multidrug Tolerance.”  GSAS Biology student Amy Spoering, a graduate student working with Dr. Lewis, was also chosen to present a talk at the ICAAC based on the competition of abstracts.  The title of her talk was “Multidrug tolerance: The search for persister genes.”

Professor Lewis also participated in the NIH Drug Discovery and Antimicrobial Resistance Study Section held from October 21st –22nd in Washington, DC.  Additionally, he participated in an NIH Biodefense Study Section from November 4th –5th .

Assistant Professor Rebeca Rosengaus presented the seminar "Socioecoimmunology: an Integrated Approach to Study the Impact of Disease and Parasitism on Social Insects" at the Université of Bourgogne, Dijon, France on July 6th. 

Professor Rosengaus, together with GSAS Ph.D. student Marielle Postava-Davignon presented the poster "The effect of nest architecture on disease susceptibility in the dampwood termite Zootermopsis angusticollis (Hagen)" at the 83rd National Annual Conference of the Graduate Women in Science, hosted at Northeastern University from June 10th –13th , 2004. 

Professor Rosengaus was involved in the organization of the 83rd Annual National Conference of the Graduate Women in Science entitled "Building Bridges". This meeting, hosted at Northeastern University from June 10th-13th, brought together 80 participants from different fields of science within the United States. The meeting provided an invaluable networking opportunity for graduate students, post-docs, and women in academia, industry and government.

Professor Rosengaus, along with her coauthors, was invited to present results from their research in two symposia at the International Conference of Entomology, held in Brisbane, Australia on August 15th-21st.  The first paper, entitled “Trade-offs between disease resistance and reproduction in incipient colonies of the dampwood termite Zootermopsis angusticollis” was presented at the Social Insect Parasites and Diseases Symposium.  The second paper “Disease, inbreeding, outbreeding and colony foundation in the dampwood termite Zootermopsis angusticollis was presented at the “Ecological Immunity of Invertebrates” Symposium.

GSAS students Vibha Ahuja and Emily Hart and Susan Powers-Lee, Professor and Chair delivered two presentations at the July meeting of the International Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology:

Ahuja, V., and Powers-Lee, S.G. “Recombinant expression of Polymorphic Forms of Human Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase,” FASEB J. 18, 15.32 (2004).

Hart, E.J., and Powers-Lee, S.G. “Probing the Glutamine Site of Escherichia coli Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase,” FASEB J. 18, 15.33 (2004).

Professor and Chair of Biology Susan Powers-Lee presented an invited talk entitled,  "Expression and Analysis of Polymorphic Forms of Human CPS I" at the 19th International Conference on Arginine and Pyrimidines, held in Marburg, Germany from Aug. 31-Sept. 4, 2004.  GSAS Biology students Vibha Ahuja and Amna Saeed-Kothe were collaborators on the project.

Associate Dean of the College and Director of the Marine Science Center, Professor Edward Jarroll was a recent invited keynote speaker at the 4th International Giardia Conference and first combined Giardia/Cryptosporidium Meeting, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in September. Professor Jarroll’s delivered a lecture entitled,  “Encystment as a Target for Drug Design.”

Associate Professor Dan Scheirer was featured in the video series, "Essential Science: Life Science", a professional development course for teachers. He provides commentary as a forensic botanist for Part 4 of the series, "Plant Life Cycles" (http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life).  The "Essential Science: Life Science" series was produced by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for the Annenberg/CPB Channel and premiered in Spring 2004. For more information on viewing times or to view simultaneous streaming video, go to the Annenberg/CPB Channel website.

Matthews Distinguished Professor Phyllis Strauss gave a seminar presentation at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France on October 28th.  The title of the talk was "Repair of oxidative DNA damage--what you don't know can hurt you."  The latest publication from the Strauss lab, “2004 Novel role of tyrosine in catalysis by human AP endonuclease” appeared in this month's issue of DNA Repair 3 (Mundle, S.T., Fattal, M.H., Melo, L.F., Coriolan, J.D. and Strauss, P.R.) 

Professor Strauss will present a lecture entitled, "AP endonuclease in zebrafish development” at the international meeting, DNA Repair and Mutagenesis:  From Molecular Structure to Biological Consequences to be held in Bermuda from November 14th-20th.  Also at this meeting, the Strauss group will present two posters, "Novel role for tyrosine in catalysis by AP endonuclease" and " AP endonuclease is a maternal protein in zebrafish."

Assistant Professor Geoffrey Trussell has been invited to participate in a National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) working group on trait-mediated effects in ecological communities.  This working group involves 14 scientists from around the country and will meet at NCEAS in Santa Barbara, CA in April 2005.

Professor Gwilym Jones and GSAS Student Miranda Buck delivered a presentation entitled, "Skeletal development and Sexual Dimorphism of the Atlantic White-sided Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus) in the Northwest Atlantic." (abstract  #209.) at the 84th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists held in Arcata, California from June 11th-17th.