BIMS

The horrible disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion and sinking of the BP oil platform is all over the news.  Devastation to the landscape and wildlife all along the Gulf Coast is sure to be a topic of discussion for months and years to come. Lawsuits will be in the headlines, and government finger-pointing is going to part of coming elections.   How could such a thing happen?  How can such pervasive damage be repaired?

News videos for the past two weeks have shown use of booms, human hair, and chemical dispersants to try to minimize the amount of oil reaching shore.  However, little has been said about the use of microbes to help digest the oil and remove it from the water and shoreline.  One amazing fact about microbes is that when it comes to the versatility of their metabolism and their physiological capabilities, there are few organic chemicals that one or another critter can’t break down.  Oil included.  For example, the Exxon Valdez mess was cleaned up in part using oil-eating bacteria.

You might say – “Getting rid of oil coating the shoreline and contaminating the environment?  There’s an app for that!”

Both of McMurry’s microbiologists, Drs. Tom Benoit and Gary Wilson, have experience in the use of microbes to remove oil and other hydrocarbons from contaminated soil and water.  Benoit has extensive involvement in reducing hydrocarbon contaminants from water.  In fact, he helped design a facility for the City of Nacogdoches (TX) that removes such pollutants from wastewater entering its sewage treatment facility.  It uses microbes to destroy harmful chemicals that would choke the sewage treatment plant and slow return of treated wastewater to the environment.  Wilson worked with a local electricity provider to help reduce the hydrocarbon counts in contaminated soil by more than 90% to significantly reduce the cost of disposal.  In both instances, encouraging the growth of harmless microbes that devour oil and other organic compounds in the water and soil helped protect the environment.  Chances are, students in BIMS courses this fall will find themselves doing research to try to maximize the effectiveness of similar organisms in eliminating crude oil-based pollution.

You may not be able to download the magic microbes as an app for your iPhone, but microbiology provides an answer to some of life’s trickiest problems.

This Friday, the faculty of the Biomedical Science Program will meet for a retreat to discuss our first year of operation and plan for the year ahead.  Attending will be Tom Benoit, Heidi DiFrancesca, and Gary Wilson from Biology, Paul Pyenta from Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Alicia Wyatt from Computer Science.  Larry Sharp is on vacation and will miss the meeting.

In reviewing the first year of operation, many milestones suggest a rich and profitable future for the program.  The first year saw over 20 students declare a BIMS major, mostly incoming freshmen interested in health professions or biotech.  The new courses were very well populated.  Growing publicity from the city fathers, The Development Corporation of Abilene, the TTU School of Pharmacy, and local biotech firm Receptor Logic helped to strengthen our position as the premiere life science/biotech training program in Abilene.  Heidi DiFrancesca and Hyunshun Shin from Chemistry & Biochemistry have begun collaborating on a project to develop and test new treatments for breast cancer.  And McMurry has seen the value in promoting these endeavors through funding for equipment and supplies to support the research-in-teaching approach used in BIMS.

I’m sure some time will be spent discussing the parallel development of the biotech infrastructure in Abilene, with a variety of support facilities (including the Abilene Life Sciences Foundation Research Accelerator facility) coming on line.  Add to this the decision by Abilene Independent School District to start a new engineering/computer science high school this fall and you have converging efforts that point to a bright future.  One of the tracks possible at the new high school is biotech engineering, which Dr. Jon Weidanz from TTUHSC-School of Pharmacy and I are promoting.

So what does the future hold?  That is the reason for our retreat!  I expect that we’ll see growing commitments to link our courses together and use our BIMS lab courses to conduct research.  We’ll see BIMS-focused proposals for the lab renovation competition being held on campus later this month.  We’ll see plans for research grants and programs to help high school science teachers learn and implement new methods, techniques, and equipment into their courses.  We’ll see more articulation agreements with professional schools for pharmacy, physical therapy, and who knows what else!   Clearly, BIMS is on the move and possesses the creative firepower to transform the sciences at McMurry.  Thoughtful planning and staged implementation are keys to making that happen.

Check back in a few weeks as I give an update on the event!

We’re entering the mid-summer period where the wind-down from the spring semester collides head-on with the spool-up for the fall semester.  Things are busy on campus.  Here’s a sampling:

• The first SOAR is over and the second one is next week.  SOARs are events for incoming students to go through orientation and get their class schedules worked out for the fall.  We had 120 students make McMurry their college home a week or so ago.  Over 100 more incoming freshmen are scheduled to be on campus next week.  They are the smart ones, as waiting for the third SOAR or to register at the beginning of the semester means risking closed classes and schedule conflicts.  I mentioned in a comment that roughly 10% of students at the first SOAR signed up for the initial BIMS course.  Looks like it will be a great start for Year Two of BIMS.
• Summer research is well underway.  Dr. Paul Pyenta has been working with a Welch Summer Research student to clone gfp protein into a plasmid compatible with Bacillus thuringiensis.  They’ve been using the new centrifuge mentioned in a recent post, but found the need to spin 250 ml bottles at a high speed than is possible with the swinging bucket rotor we got with it.  Another centrifuge and modified procedure will have to suffice until we can purchase another rotor more suitable to the speeds required by the original protocol.
• Dr. Pyenta ordered a new digital gel documentation system today that will allow clear photography of gels for publication and presentation.  This is a valuable piece of equipment for helping students build their biological portfolios – artifacts from their hands-on lab work will be collected and saved to document their proficiency.
• Dr. Tom Benoit taught Microbiology in Summer 1 and now is working on a proposal for the lab renovation competition McMurry will hold in August.  Science faculty were encouraged to propose innovative spaces for teaching and research for the competition, which will see the winning entry adopted to guide a lab renovation project to take place in Summer 2010.  Two labs and support spaces will be renovated to provide a model of future spaces to be seen in the Finch-Gray Science Center.  BIMS intends to have the best proposal for consideration.
• Dr. Heidi DiFrancesca has spent time this summer traveling.  No word yet whether she will join her husband Mark on a trip to Japan on behalf of their church.  One additional task Dr. D will accomplish this summer is purchase of the next important pieces of teaching/research equipment:  real-time PCR, Nanodrop spectrophotometer, new tissue culture hoods, and more.
• Dr. Larry Sharp has been busy overseeing applications to health professions schools – medical and dental, mainly.  He us also teaching both A&P I and II this summer, all while designing the new Pre-Health Professions Seminar series to be taken by our pre-health students.
• Dr. Gary Wilson has been juggling administrative duties with an overhaul of his microbiology course and some development work for his software package VirtualUnknown(TM) Microbiology.  A new totally online version of the software is in development.
• BIMS faculty plan to hold a retreat this summer to assess what worked this year and what needs “tweaking” as the BIMS program enters its second year.  One item for discussion is how we can intentionally link courses together through common projects so that we work together in research as our students learn.  We got a great start on that this year, but more can be done.

No doubt, it is a busy summer in Abilene!