BIOLOGY BULLETIN
August 10, 2009


Liz Waters has been awarded a three-year NSF grant from the Integrative Organismal Systems Division.  She is the sole PI on this $583k award titled "Evolutionary Studies of the Heat Shock Response and Thermotolerance in Boechera: Transcriptomics, Physiology and Gene Evolution."

 

Kelly Doran's research is featured on the cover of The Journal of Infectious Diseases.  Check out a description on the College of Sciences web page at: http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cos/news/cos_news_072709_doran.php

 

Joan Chen, Director of the CSUPERB MicroChemical Core Facility has received word from her collaborator at UCSD that their PGRP grant will be funded by NSF; it will provide $373k to Joan for three years.

 

Forest RohwerLiz Dinsdale, and Katie Barrot recently participated in a National Geographic Expedition to the Southern Line Islands.  You can read about the expedition at:  http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/content/about-the-expedition/

 

Rebecca Vega Thurber, Forest Rohwer's former postdoc is featured as a "Scientist to Watch" in the August 2009 issue of The Scientist both in print and online; you can see the online article at:  http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/08/1/50/1/   The online article includes a link to the video clip from The Colbert report in which Steven Colbert refers to her work in which she discovered herpes-like viruses in corals.  The article describes the work that she did in Forest's lab and her mentoring of students here.  You can rate the article online; it currently stands at 4.1 out of five starts but could go higher as only 10 votes have been cast so far.

 

We're excited to have two new faculty members join us this year:

 

Jeremy Long has just joined us and is establishing a Marine Chemical Ecology Lab in PS 145; check out his web page at http://www.3dmatt.com/drlong/ 

Jeremy will be teaching a new course on "Chemical Ecology" this fall.

 

Liz Dinsdale is our newest hire, and her area is Marine Ecology Metagenomics.  She's establishing her lab in LS 308, and is preparing a new course proposal for a lab course in Metagenomics that she hopes to offer next spring incorporating the latest technology in DNA sequencing.  This course would serve as a model for similar courses at other universities.

 


Please send your BioBulletin items to Medora Bratlien at bratlien@sunstroke.sdsu.edu by Friday at 4:00 p.m.