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August/September 2014 Newsletter

IQ Biology Blog: CSHA Travelogue
by: Vicky Li

Working on my laptop one late night, I noticed an internet ad. I realized it was not an ad, but an announcement for the fifth Cold Spring Harbor Asia Symposium on Structural Biology: From Atoms to Cells. That was my first research rotation, in Hubert Yin's lab. Then I found out it was organized by Yigong Shi, a leading researcher in X-ray crystallography at Tsing Hua University in Beijing. I thought: I'm going.

 

July 9

Three months, thirty emails, and one meeting later, here I am feeling so very jet lagged at the first conference session at the Suzhou Dushu Lake Conference Center. Did you know that China Eastern airline teaches its passengers TaiJi?

 

July 10

This is truly a high quality conference. I am amazed by the questions and ideas of my fellow students from around the world at poster sessions and other interactions. I understood some topics, thanks to my semesters at IQ Biology, but some were foreign material, like using structural biology to learn more about plant photosynthesis mechanisms. This research may be applied to using plants for energy. I gave my own talk on the molecular dynamics of protein interactions this evening as well.

A scene from the Gardens of Suzhou

July 11

Today was full of student questions. I talked with Peter Wright, an expert from Scripps Research Institute on dynamical NMR, then went with everyone on a tour of Old Suzhou. Habits of Yigong Shi to learn:

  1. Infectious and sincere enthusiasm for research
  2. Explain things simply and directly
  3. Mentor, support and be a good role model for students
  4. Science is play, not work

This conference is huge. Applications range from drug discovery to plant phylogeny. And everything ties to determination of biological structure. Talking to people, the general gist I got was that, on the medical side, biologists need to pay attention to side effects. On the computational side, biologists need to pay attention to model uncertainty. The talks seem to agree on something: As with many things, nature does science best.


Vicky Li is a second-year IQ Biology and 
Applied Math student working in the labs of 
David Bortz and Vanja Dukic.
CU-Boulder study helps a true Colorado native


 
A genetic sleuthing effort led by the University of 

Colorado Boulder that resulted in the identification of Colorado's "true" native greenback cutthroat trout two years ago has come full circle with the stocking of the official state fish into Colorado's high country. The stocking event was a conservation management milestone, a result of a novel 2012 genetic study led by CU-Boulder Senior Research Associate Jessica Metcalf of the BioFrontiers Institute that helped to clarify the native diversity and distribution of several Colorado cutthroat trout strains.

 

Roughly 1,200 greenback cutthroat fingerlings reared in federal and state hatcheries in Colorado were stocked into Zimmerman Lake, located in the South Platte River basin near Cameron Pass west of Fort Collins on Friday, Aug. 8. The Greenback Cutthroat Trout Recovery Team involving state and federal agencies hopes the milestone is the first step in reintroducing the federally protected fish into selected waters in the South Platte basin. Read more here

Recent papers by our faculty 

The p38beta MAP kinase possesses an intrinsic autophosphorylation activity, generated by a short region composed of the alpha-G helix and MAPK insert. (J Biol Chem.) - Natalie Ahn

A peptide fuctionalized poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogel for investigating the influence of biochemical and biophysical matrix properties on tumor cell migration. (Biomater Sci.) - Kristi Anseth

Design and Characterization of a Synthetically Accessible, Photodegradable Hydrogel for User-Directed Formation of Neural Networks. (Biomacromolecules) - Kristi Anseth

Efficiently inferring community structure in bipartite networks. (Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys.) - Aaron Clauset

Roles of transforming growth factor-beta1 and OB-cadherin in porcine cardiac valve myofibroblast differentiation. (FASEB J.) - Kristi Anseth and Leslie Leinwand

3' terminal diversity of MRP RNA and other human noncoding RNAs revealed by deep sequencing.  (BMC Mol Biol.) - Tom Cech

A dimeric state for PRC2. (Nucleic Acids Res.) - Tom Cech

Inventory of telomerase components in human cells reveals multiple subpopulations of hTR and hTERT. (Nucleic Acids Res.) - Tom Cech

New mechanistic and therapeutic targets for pediatric heart failure: report from a national heart, lung, and blood institute working group. (Circulation) - Leslie Leinwand
Upcoming Events

2014 Charlie Butcher Award Lecture
Dr. Richard Axel
Columbia University
"Order from Disorder: Internal Representations of the Olfactory World"
White caucasian female child smelling purple blooms of a flowering chive herb.

Join us for an evening with Dr. Axel and learn more about his groundbreaking discovery of more than 1,000 different genes that encode olfactory receptors. This discovery solved the puzzle of how we translate the sensations around us into knowledge that is key for our survival and quality of life.

 

Tuesday, October 7 - 7:00 pm

Math Building Auditorium


 The Charlie Butcher Award will be presented to Dr. Axel by CU-Boulder's Dr. Thomas Cech.

Read more about this event

BioFrontiers welcomes the newest IQ Biology students

 

BioFrontiers welcomed six new students into the 2014 class of the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology PhD Certificate Program (IQ Biology). After a week-long bootcamp, the group is now getting settled into their Foundations class and will start their first of three lab rotations in the next few weeks. 

 

BioFrontiers will begin recruiting its 2015 class of students in October. To learn more about this interdisciplinary opportunity, go to: http://iqbiology.colorado.edu

BioFrontiers is hiring!
  

The BioFrontiers Institute is currently seeking a tenure-track assistant professor in computational biology. The successful candidate will be rostered in one of our ten participating departments. 

 

BioFrontiers is focused on candidates who are wanting to develop an internationally recognized research program in computational biology, with additional emphases on genomics, the microbiome and/or network science. 

 

This position will hold the Marvin H. Caruthers Endowed Chair for Early Career Faculty for a period of four years. Application review begins November 11 and materials will be accepted electronically at: http://www.jobsatcu.com/postings/86204 

Our Mission:
At the University of Colorado BioFrontiers Institute, researchers from the life sciences, physical sciences, computer science and engineering are working together to uncover new knowledge at the frontiers of science, and partnering with industry to make their discoveries relevant.
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