BIMS

Recently, three BIMS majors found out they will receive Bloomer and Beasley Research Fellowships for the coming year.  All three are students of Dr. Gary Wilson and will be pursuing different projects investigating Bacillus thuringiensis spore properties as they pursue Honors research and write their Honors theses in the next year.

The Charles and Lisa Bloomer Research Fellowship is awarded to support research of promising students in the School of Natural and Computational Science (SNCS).  This initiative of the Science and Math Advisory Board (SMAB) provides a research stipend for students as they work closely with McMurry faculty on a research project.  Dr. Bloomer is a successful oral surgeon in Abilene who has generously and regularly supported the sciences at his alma mater.  The biennial picnic the Bloomers host for SMAB members and SNCS faculty is a popular event building relationships and communicating the vision each holds for McMurry’s science future.  The Beasley Research Fellowship is a new program supporting student research in the biological sciences.  McMurry’s science alumni are spearheading an effort to create an endowment in memory of Dr. Clark Beasley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the Department of Biology who died this past summer.  This represents the first year this fellowship has been awarded.

Recipients of this year’s awards are Heather Rawls, Miranda Nguyen, and Nicole McGunegle.  Their projects will study wild type and genetically-engineered strains of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and Bacillus cereus (Bc) grown in rich and poor media.  Bt is a spore-former that produces an insecticidal toxin at the time of sporulation.  Bc is a commonly encountered and well-studied spore-former closely related to Bt but generally harmless.  The genetically-engineered strains include  Bt strains that do not form crystals and Bc strains that have been engineered to produce Bt crystals.  One project will look at how the presence or absence of the crystal in rich and poor media influences spore and crystal size and toxicity.  A second project will look at how growth conditions impact spore dormancy and the process of activation and germination.  It is possible an undiscovered variation of quorum sensing might be involved.  The third project will explore UV and chemical resistance of wild type and genetically-engineered strains produced in rich and poor media.  All projects fit the criteria for BIMS research:  a complete project doable in a short time frame, certain discovery no matter the experimental outcome, publishable work.

Stay tuned for updates on how this work is progressing!

Every year the BIMS faculty sits down and discusses what research they might pursue for the sake of teaching and capstone projects.  With the start of school only a week away, we have narrowed our focus to a couple of very promising avenues for student research.  We thought you might like to know what’s made it to the top of our list for possible projects…

1. Bioactive compounds in the environment.  Last year we began work to gear up use of the yeast estrogen screening (YES) assay to test soils and waters for the presence of estrogen-mimic compounds.  Such compounds have been implicated in estrogen-fueled cancers, early onset of puberty, and other such health issues.  Our early discussions this year have included involvement of Biochemistry in the use of the screen for testing area ground water and soils while Biology capstone students (BIMS 4201) may pursue use of biofermenters to produce mixed populations of microbes capable of destroying the chemicals.  So, using our resources to identify the problem and find solutions.  I like that!

2. Spore physiology and ecology.  During my doctoral research, I made some discoveries that have gone unreported and have not been pursued since.  My work was on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a  bacterium of economic importance because of the insecticidal crystal protein produced when it forms spores.  Unlike the rest of the Bt world at the time, my interest was not in the crystal but in the biology of the spore.  A part of that work involved studying, essentially, how diet influenced spore properties.  I found those spores created in high sugar environments were larger and more resistant to heat, UV, and harsh chemicals, and germinated differently than did spores created in low sugar environments.  I am teaching an Advanced Microbiology course (BIMS 4491) this fall where the students will resume the research with our goal to present results at the Texas Branch ASM meetings in March and to publish our results before the end of the year.  Students leaving McMurry with presentations and publications is a good thing!  Because the work is so expansive and offers so many opportunities for students to jump on-board, other students doing capstones may also find a piece of this puzzle they want to pursue.  This research teaches some great basic biology and microbiology and has tremendous biomedical importance – after all, Bt is the simulant used for research on anthrax!

Some might look at the type of work our students pursue at McMurry and determine that the research done here is not as “cutting edge” and sophisticated as that done at large universities.  Rightly so, and without apologies!  Our intent is not to invite undergraduates to wash dishes or “piddle around” on the fringes of our research, but to be the main contributors to our work – much as graduate students are at those large universities. Every student is exposed to research here, and they are integral to our progress – not footnotes to graduate students’ success!  Their work is the main course, the entree and not the parsley and onion soup.  The fact of the matter is there are always plenty of questions of interest and importance to be answered that are left behind as the juggernaut of big science crashes forward.  We will gladly fill in the blanks left behind as they rush onward.  Such questions provide a fertile ground for learning and discovery.  We are student-centered in our teaching and in our research.  BIMS at McMurry is simply “science done better”.

Late in the spring semester, McMurry holds its annual Academic Awards Luncheon to honor the top students in each academic and athletic program.  That luncheon was held today, and it marked the first occasion to name the top BIMS majors.

With such a new program, there are only a dozen or so BIMS majors.  They fall into two categories – those who entered the program this fall as freshmen, and those who have transferred into the program from other majors.  For this reason, only two students were recognized.  The Outstanding Freshman Biomedical Science Major for 2008-2009 is Jonathan Urbanczyk from Abilene.  Lauren Bump (a sophomore in years but a junior in hours) was named the Outstanding Junior Biomedical Science Major.  She hails from San Antonio.  Both students have distinguished themselves in a variety of ways and are outstanding representatives of the program.  We’re proud of them both.  They represent a truly exceptional group of students who claim Biomedical Science as their major – every one is a joy in the classroom and has a promising future ahead.

Also at the Academic Awards Luncheon, the winners of the Third Annual Student Poster Competition were named.  Twenty four posters explaining student research were submitted by individuals and groups from Biology, Biochemistry, Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, Business, and Physics.  The top award for an individual poster went to Matt Durham for his project entitled “The Design and Construction of a Plasmid Vector for Encoding Green Fluorescent Protein that is Compatible with Bacillus thuringiensis.”  The project was guided by BIMS faculty member Dr. Paul Pyenta in Chemistry & Biochemistry.  Matt took up the project begun years ago by another student and made great strides to express gfp in Bt cells.  The work is in support of an interdisciplinary project that will study the ecology of Bt spores through the use of the genetically-modified, gfp-expressing strain Matt has engineered. 

Second place in the group project category went to Dustin Mance, Laura Salas, and Julie Halverson for their project entitled “The Inhibition of Mannitol Use of Gram Positive Bacteria by Bacitracin”.  This project was completed in their BIOL 3410 Microbiology course, where the lab skills and knowledge are learned through student involvement in research projects.  One of the early projects all students participated in was the isolation and identification of bacteria from nature.  As groups, students then studied the antiseptic/disinfectant- and antibiotic-resistance of their bacteria.  This group tested their Gram positive cocci’s antibiotic resistance using mannitol salt agar, and an interesting anomaly was seen with Julie’s Staphylococcus aureus.  The bacteria turned the normally red plate yellow (as expected) everywhere except in the vicinity of the bacitracin antibiotic disk.  Their final poster project was to study this phenomenon further.  Obviously, their work impressed the judges.

Our congratulations to each of these students for a job well done.  Can’t wait to see what Fall 2009 has in store for us!