With Q accepting an appointment in the Dean’s Office and four new Associate Department Heads on board, change is definitely in the air this Fall in the hallowed offices our MIP Administration.  Here’s an overview: 

A Note From Dr. Q to MIP

As I embark on a new adventure I want to express my thanks to the DMIP faculty, staff and students for your efforts during the past seven years.  Together, we have accomplished a lot.  We assembled an administrative team for the graduate program, developed resources and policies to assist students and faculty and provided an excellent training environment for our students.  A special thanks is extended to all of the graduate students.  Your dedication and enthusiasm are strengths of our program. 

Q et al take a bike ride in the German countryside

New Associate Department Heads have been named

Dr. Erica Suchman, Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Education

Dr. Erica Suchman is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology, at Colorado State University.  She received her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Irvine in 1997.  She researches the effectiveness of active learning strategies in large lecture courses.  She teaches general Microbiology, Molecular and Medical Virology, Virology and Cell Culture Lab, and Service Learning Capstone Microbiology courses. She was named as a Colorado State University Distinguished Teaching Scholar in 2010, and is the CSU Master Teacher Initiative Coordinator for the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  She was named as a fellow in the Teaching Academy of the Consortium of West Region Colleges of Veterinary Medicine in 2013.  She was awarded the American Society for Microbiology’s 2014 Carski Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award. She was a member of the Arboviral Infectious Disease Labs (AIDL).

Dr. Mark Zabel, Associate Department Head for Graduate Education

Dr. Mark Zabel established his prion research laboratory at CSU ten years ago and is currently tenured Associate Professor and Associate Director of the PRC. He received his PhD in experimental pathology from the University of Utah. Dr. Zabel was awarded the prestigious Human Frontiers in Science Long Term Research Fellowship and received postdoctoral training in prion biology, biochemistry and pathology from the laboratory of Dr. Adriano Aguzzi at the Neuropathology Institute, University Hospital of Zürich.  He also received training in immunology in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Rolf Zinkernagel in the Immunology Department, also at the University Hospital of Zürich. Dr. Zabel’s research program focuses on the interaction of prions with cells and receptors of the immune system and lymphoid tissues in the early entry, trafficking, and pathogenesis phases of prion infections.His research is funded through USDA-APHIS and NIH-Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Dr. Kristy Pabilonia, Associate Department Head for DVM and Clinical ServiceThis picture was taken at a domestic duck farm in Southeast Asia

Kristy has been a member of the MIP faculty since 2005.  Her service appointment is in the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories, where she serves as Section Head of Molecular Diagnostics and Avian Diagnostics.  She enjoys service work, particularly working on foreign animal, emerging and zoonotic diseases.  Most of her teaching is in the DVM curriculum, focusing on infectious diseases, laboratory testing and poultry medicine.  She loves to travel and has worked on a number of diagnostics/surveillance capacity building projects in developing countries.  In her spare time she likes to ride her cruiser bike, watch college football and go snowboarding.

Dr. John Belisle, Associate Department Head for Research

Meet Dr. Bruno Sobral

Dr. Bruno has an educational background in Agronomic Engineering, followed by a Ph.D. in Genetics. The topic he's have always been passionate about, since his undergraduate research, is symbiosis. Over the last 12 years he has been increasingly interested in defining and exploring healthy (multi-scale) trajectories of individuals and has brought concepts of symbiosis to bear on our human microbial ecology. His past and current funded research activities have been focused on infectious diseases as well as computational biology, bioinformatics, and cyberinfrastructure development, deployment and evolution through collaborative research with wet bench scientists. His future research interests and activities encompass the past and project into the future to include food production, nutrition, and sustainable human ecologies at various scales, from molecules to markets. He also seeks to expand the views of symbiosis to include organic-digital symbioses in the context of health systems.

Meet Dr. Zaid Abdo

Zaid has a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from the University of Idaho. Zaid was a Postdoctoral Scientist at McMaster University, and Assistant/Tenured Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Department of Statistics, and Program of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Idaho. He was a Computational Biologist, USDA-Agricultural Research Service; Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Institute of Bioinformatics at the University of Georgia.
Awards and Honors: Young Investigator Travel Award - 2nd Biennial National IDeA NISBRE in Washington DC, '08; Top Cited Author award of the year 2008, Journal of Environmental Microbiology, '09; Early-Career Faculty Award, University of Idaho, ’10; The University of Idaho Innovation Award, ’10; Performance Award, USDA-ARS, ’14 and ‘15
Research Interests: One of his main research objectives is to understand the microbial community structure (the microbiome), its interactions and function and how such microbial communities interact with and affect their host and are affected by, or might affect, their environment. One of his main goals is to utilize this understanding to assess risk to disease. His experience and background is mostly focused on developing and utilizing computational and statistical methods and models aimed to facilitate our understanding of these systems.

Meet Dr. Rebekah Kading

Dr. Rebekah Kading recently accepted the Medical Entomologist faculty position in MIP. Rebekah obtained her B.S. in Entomology/Wildlife Conservation from the University of Delaware, M.S. in Entomology from the University of Arkansas, and PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  She conducted her dissertation research on malaria transmission dynamics in southern Zambia, including examination of seasonal entomologic inoculation rates, mosquito blood feeding behavior, and population genetics. In 2007 Rebekah joined the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases, Arbovirus Diseases Branch as a post-doctoral research fellow.  She has worked for the State of Delaware Mosquito Control Section, and with an interest mosquito taxonomy, built a reference collection of East African mosquitoes at the CDC. She lives in Fort Collins with her husband Brian and boys Jonah (6), Jasper (23 months), and Jett (3 weeks).  In her spare time Rebekah enjoys playing the violin with several ensembles including the Health and Wellness Community Orchestra, and teaches private violin lessons. Rebekah is very enthusiastic to officially join MIP on January 4, 2016 and looks forward to being a part of department!

Meet Dr. Paula Schaffer

As of Septemeber 1st, Paula was converted to assistant professor. Paula grew up in southern California, graduated from Stanford University, and received her DVM from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. After vet school, she returned to California and spent a year in clinical practice in the setting of a small animal medicine, surgery, and emergency internship. She then completed an anatomic pathology residency at Colorado State University and passed the ACVP board exam in 2013.  She enjoys reading biopsies, helping veterinarians with their cases, developing research contacts on main campus, and instructing residents and students. Fish pathology is one of her special interests. She spends her spare time riding her little mustang horse.

Biosafety Director Earns Acclaim for Securing Research Pathogens

Click here for more details: http://source.colostate.edu/biosafety-director-earns-acclaim-for-securing-research-pathogens/

Host Determinants of Prion Strain Diversity Independent of Prion Protein Genotype

Jenna Crowell, Andrew Hughson, Byron Caughey and Richard Bessen
Journal of Virology 89:  10427-10441 (October 2015)

This month’s highlighted MIP publication involves the journey of a pair of characters called ‘Wasted’ and ‘Cheeky’.  Our dynamic duo makes repeated visits to a strange land, meeting colleagues and experiencing things that unexpectedly - and in some cases quite dramatically - changes their personalities.  However Wasted and Cheeky are not nicknames for MIP faculty members (although readers are encouraged to send their suggestions for MIP faculty who would fit these monikers to jeffrey.wilusz@colostate.edu) – they are alternative names for the CWD A and CWD B lines of prions that were originally obtained from white-tailed deer.  Prions are protein-based pathogens that cause transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and animals via induced protein misfolding.

The Bessen-ites used the Wasted and Cheeky prions to infect transgenic ‘HPrP7752KO’ mice that overexpress the PrnP prion protein from Syrian Hamsters in their brains.  The resulting prions were then serially passaged in the transgenic mice to let Wasted and Cheeky individually ‘adapt’ to the hamster prion protein in an environment that theoretically (based on PrnP gene behavior alone) should not change good olde Cheeky or Wasted.  Aspects of the pathogenesis of the adapted Cheeky and Wasted prions in Syrian hamsters were then assessed.  These included classic parameters of prion neurological disease such as the incubation period, weight loss, and neurologic sequelae (tremors, balance problems, etc.).   The group also characterized the biophysical properties of the newly adapted prions.  Surprisingly, Jenna et al found that the passaged Cheeky and Wasted prions developed altered incubation periods, differential prion protein stability, and changes in the efficiency of plaque formation in infected brains.  The most likely explanation for these changes in prion strain properties is that host factors in the rodents OTHER THAN THE WELL-STUDIED PrpPN GENE must be at work here.

So why did we pick this paper for our coveted MIPublication of the Month©?  First, the study provides strong evidence that novel host factors influence prion adaptation and infection.  The eventual identification of these host factors that modify prion strains will lead to a better understanding of the molecular underpinnings of prion infections and possible insights into new therapeutic interventions.  Second, the study also provides a model system to use for exploring precisely what these factors could be. Since in scientific research everything revolves around your assay, we hope that this transgenic rodent system will provide a firm foundation for many interesting finding to come.  Finally, let’s face it – prions are cool – and misfolding is extremely interesting (unless one is referring to trying to put those recently washed fitted sheets back neatly into a linen closet…..). 

MIP Publications October 2015

Sprague WS, Apetrei C, Avery AC, Peskind RL, Vandewoude S.  Large granular lymphocytes are universally increased in human, macaque, and feline lentiviral infection.  Vet Immunol Immunopathol. 2015 Oct 15;167(3-4):110-21.

Burton JH, Venable RO, Vail DM, Williams LE, Clifford CA, Axiak-Bechtel SM, Avery AC, Thamm DH.  Pulse-Administered Toceranib Phosphate Plus Lomustine for Treatment of Unresectable Mast Cell Tumors in Dogs.  J Vet Intern Med. 2015 Jul-Aug;29(4):1098-104

McGrew AK, O'Hara TM, Stricker CA, Margaret Castellini J, Beckmen KB, Salman MD, Ballweber LR.  Ecotoxicoparasitology: Understanding mercury concentrations in gut contents, intestinal helminths and host tissues of Alaskan gray wolves (Canis lupus).  Sci Total Environ. 2015 Dec 1;536:866-71.

Furlani RE, Richardson MA, Podell BK, Ackart DF, Haugen JD, Melander RJ, Basaraba RJ, Melander C.  Second generation 2-aminoimidazole based advanced glycation end product inhibitors and breakers.  Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2015 Jun 29. pii: S0960-894X(15)00673-3. doi: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2015.06.080. [Epub ahead of print]

Richardson MA, Furlani RE, Podell BK, Ackart DF, Haugen JD, Melander RJ, Melander C, Basaraba RJ.  Inhibition and breaking of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) with bis-2-aminoimidazole derivatives.  Tetrahedron Lett. 2015;56(23):3406-3409.

Marques MA, Berrêdo-Pinho M, Rosa TL, Pujari V, Lemes RM, Lery LM, Silva CA, Guimarães AC, Atella GC, Wheat WH, Brennan PJ, Crick DD, Belisle JT, Pessolani MC.  The essential role of cholesterol metabolism in the intracellular survival of Mycobacterium leprae is not coupled to central carbon metabolism and energy production.  J Bacteriol. 2015 Sep 21. pii: JB.00625-15. [Epub ahead of print]

Cho YS, Jang YB, Lee SE, Cho JY, Ahn JM, Hwang I, Heo E, Nam HM, Cho D, Her M, Jean YH, Jung SC, Kim JM, Lee HS, Lee K, Belisle JT.  Short communication: Proteomic characterization of tuberculin purified protein derivative from Mycobacterium bovis.  Res Vet Sci. 2015 Aug;101:117-9.

Crowell J, Hughson A, Caughey B, Bessen RA.  Host Determinants of Prion Strain Diversity Independent of Prion Protein Genotype.  J Virol. 2015 Oct 15;89(20):10427-41.

Denlinger DS, Lozano-Fuentes S, Lawyer PG, Black WC 4th, Bernhardt SA.  Assessing Insecticide Susceptibility of Laboratory Lutzomyia longipalpis and Phlebotomus papatasi Sand Flies (Diptera: Psychodidae: Phlebotominae).  J Med Entomol. 2015 Sep;52(5):1003-12.

Bohn AA.  Diagnosis of Disorders of Iron Metabolism in Dogs and Cats.  Clin Lab Med. 2015 Sep;35(3):579-90.

Li K, Wang Y, Yang G, Byun S, Rao G, Shoen C, Yang H, Gulati A, Crick DC, Cynamon M, Huang G, Docampo R, No JH, Oldfield E.  Oxa, Thia, Heterocycle, and Carborane Analogues of SQ109: Bacterial and Protozoal Cell Growth Inhibitors.  ACS Infect Dis. 2015 May 8;1(5):215-221.

Zhang L, Reckling S, Dean GA.  Phenotypic and functional analysis of CD1a+ dendritic cells from cats chronically infected with feline immunodeficiency virus.  Comp Immunol Microbiol Infect Dis. 2015 Aug 2. pii: S0147-9571(15)00055-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cimid.2015.07.003. [Epub ahead of print]

Yu CH, Micaroni M, Puyskens A, Schultz TE, Yeo JC, Stanley AC, Lucas M, Kurihara J, Dobos KM, Stow JL, Blumenthal A.  RP105 Engages Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase p110δ To Facilitate the Trafficking and Secretion of Cytokines in Macrophages during Mycobacterial Infection.  J Immunol. 2015 Sep 14. pii: 1500017. [Epub ahead of print]

Yashari JM, Duncan CG, Duerr FM.  Evaluation of a novel canine activity monitor for at-home physical activity analysis.  BMC Vet Res. 2015 Jul 4;11:146. doi: 10.1186/s12917-015-0457-y.

Trzil JE, Masseau I, Webb TL, Chang CH, Dodam JR, Liu H, Quimby JM, Dow SW, Reinero CR.  Intravenous adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell therapy for the treatment of feline asthma: a pilot study.  J Feline Med Surg. 2015 Sep 17. pii: 1098612X15604351. [Epub ahead of print]

Duggal NK, Reisen WK, Fang Y, Newman RM, Yang X, Ebel GD, Brault AC.  Genotype-specific variation in West Nile virus dispersal in California.  Virology. 2015 Jul 23;485:79-85. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2015.07.004. [Epub ahead of print]

Steel JJ, Geiss BJ.  A novel system for visualizing alphavirus assembly.  J Virol Methods. 2015 Sep 15;222:158-63.

Henao-Tamayo M, Shanley CA, Verma D, Zilavy A, Stapleton MC, Furney SK, Podell B, Orme IM.  The Efficacy of the BCG Vaccine against Newly Emerging Clinical Strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  PLoS One. 2015 Sep 14;10(9):e0136500. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136500.

Obregón-Henao A, Arnett KA, Henao-Tamayo M, Massoudi L, Creissen E, Andries K, Lenaerts AJ, Ordway DJ.  Susceptibility of Mycobacterium abscessus to Antimycobacterial Drugs in Preclinical Models.  Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2015 Aug 24. pii: AAC.00459-15. [Epub ahead of print]

Selariu A, Powers JG, Nalls A, Brandhuber M, Mayfield A, Fullaway S, Wyckoff CA, Goldmann W, Zabel MM, Wild MA, Hoover EA, Mathiason CK.  In utero transmission and tissue distribution of chronic wasting disease-associated prions in free-ranging Rocky Mountain elk.  J Gen Virol. 2015 Sep 9. doi: 10.1099/jgv.0.000281. [Epub ahead of print]

Davenport KA, Henderson DM, Bian J, Telling GC, Mathiason CK, Hoover EA.  Insights into Chronic Wasting Disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Species Barriers by Use of Real-Time Conversion.  J Virol. 2015 Sep 15;89(18):9524-31.

Henderson DM, Denkers ND, Hoover CE, Garbino N, Mathiason CK, Hoover EA.  Longitudinal Detection of Prion Shedding in Saliva and Urine by Chronic Wasting Disease-Infected Deer by Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion.  J Virol. 2015 Sep 15;89(18):9338-47.

Larrouy-Maumus G, Gilleron M, Skovierová H, Zuberogoitia S, Brennan PJ, Puzo G, Jackson M, Nigou J.  A glycomic approach reveals a new mycobacterial polysaccharide.  Glycobiology. 2015 Aug 10. pii: cwv061. [Epub ahead of print]

Bruhn DF, Scherman MS, Liu J, Scherbakov D, Meibohm B, Böttger EC, Lenaerts AJ, Lee RE.  In vitro and in vivo Evaluation of Synergism between Anti-Tubercular Spectinamides and Non-Classical Tuberculosis Antibiotics.  Sci Rep. 2015 Sep 14;5:13985. doi: 10.1038/srep13985.

McDermott EG, Mayo CE, Gerry AC, Laudier D, MacLachlan NJ, Mullens BA.  Bluetongue virus infection creates light averse Culicoides vectors and serious errors in transmission risk estimates.  Parasit Vectors. 2015 Sep 17;8:460.

Myers JA, Wittenburg LA, Olver CS, Martinez CM, Bright JM.  Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the factor Xa inhibitor apixaban after oral and intravenous administration to cats.  Am J Vet Res. 2015 Aug;76(8):732-8. doi: 10.2460/ajvr.76.8.732.

Knudson SE, Awasthi D, Kumar K, Carreau A, Goullieux L, Lagrange S, Vermet H, Ojima I, Slayden RA.  Cell division inhibitors with efficacy equivalent to isoniazid in the acute murine Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection model.  J Antimicrob Chemother. 2015 Aug 5. pii: dkv226. [Epub ahead of print]

Geremia C, Hoeting JA, Wolfe LL, Galloway NL, Antolin MF, Spraker TR, Miller MW, Hobbs NT.  AGE AND REPEATED BIOPSY INFLUENCE ANTEMORTEM PRPCWD TESTING IN MULE DEER (ODOCOILEUS HEMIONUS) IN COLORADO, USA.  J Wildl Dis. 2015 Aug 7. [Epub ahead of print]

Spraker TR, Gidlewski T, Powers JG, Nichols T, Balachandran A, Cummings B, Wild MA, VerCauteren K, O'Rourke KI.  Progressive accumulation of the abnormal conformer of the prion protein and spongiform encephalopathy in the obex of nonsymptomatic and symptomatic Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni) with chronic wasting disease.  J Vet Diagn Invest. 2015 Jul;27(4):431-41.

Gramza A, Teel T, VandeWoude S, Crooks K.  Understanding public perceptions of risk regarding outdoor pet cats to inform conservation action.  Conserv Biol. 2015 Sep 17. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12631. [Epub ahead of print]

Sprague WS, Apetrei C, Avery AC, Peskind RL, Vandewoude S.  Large granular lymphocytes are universally increased in human, macaque, and feline lentiviral infection.  Vet Immunol Immunopathol. 2015 Oct 15;167(3-4):110-21.

Lozano CC, Sweanor LL, Wilson-Henjum G, Kays RW, Moreno R, VandeWoude S, Troyer RM.  Identification of Novel Gammaherpesviruses in Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and Bobcats (Lynx rufus) in Panama and Colorado, USA.  J Wildl Dis. 2015 Aug 17. [Epub ahead of print]

Charley PA, Wilusz J.  Standing your Ground to Exoribonucleases: Function of Flavivirus Long Non-coding RNAs.  Virus Res. 2015 Sep 11. pii: S0168-1702(15)30064-2. doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2015.09.009. [Epub ahead of print]

Moon SL, Dodd BJ, Brackney DE, Wilusz CJ, Ebel GD, Wilusz J.  Flavivirus sfRNA suppresses antiviral RNA interference in cultured cells and mosquitoes and directly interacts with the RNAi machinery.  Virology. 2015 Aug 28;485:322-329. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2015.08.009. [Epub ahead of print]

Ever feel a little nosy about what's going on in the Vet Diagnostic Lab?

Get a whiff of the latest Lab Lines. Click the picture above.

The Rocky Mountain Virology Meeting was held on September 25th-27th, 2015 at the CSU Mountain Campus in Pingree Park.

Congratulations to the following MIP students who won awards for their oral presentations.

Amber Rico – 1st Place  (Ken Olson Lab)
Becky Gullberg – 2nd Place  (Rushika Perera Lab)
Danielle Adney – 3rd Place  (Dick Bowen Lab)

Andy Gonzalez, an alumni of our Micro MS-B Program, won the first place award for his poster presentation.  Andy is a graduate student at the University of Idaho working in the lab of Tanya Miura.

Headsquashers

The AIDL Softball Team has been resurrected(!) and is one of the coolest teams in the Fort Collins City Softball League.  Now if they can only figure out how to win a few games…..

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

William Black getting his hair pulled out by his grandson...so he doesn't have to bother.

Edit visited Chile and Bolivia this summer. Check out these great photos she snapped along the way.

Believe it or not, the Prion 2015 Meeting backpack made it all the way!

Serial Boogerler

The Micro building elevator has been victim of several attacks. The most recent attack happened 09/10/15. Please...Let's be clean.

Bye Bye FAS; Hello Digital Measures

Attention Faculty Members - it's annual evaluation season - your favorite time of year! CVMBS is moving from FAS to a new system called ‘Digital Measures’ with the promise that it will reduce the time required for annual review data entry by each faculty member and dramatically reduce time required for the PTR committee to assemble quantitative data for their evaluations. Overall the intent is to reduce administrative burden, provide a useful CV management tool, and improve the quality of annual evaluations.
If you haven’t done so already, please send your updated faculty CV to Ida Tieman

Pathology Remodel Update

Check out the newly remodeled second floor in the Pathology building. The Northern side and the middle area of the second floor have been remodeled and the south side is set to be remodeled later this year.

Meet Madelein Lopez

“Greetings MIP department! My name is Madelein Lopez and you can find my cheerful face anytime you walk into the Microbiology building office at the front desk! I recently graduated from CSU with a bachelor of arts in the spring; however I chose to pursue another passion of mine, working in a university setting combing my joy of working university services with the diverse university community. I also enjoy drinking tea, running, reading mystery novels, trying out some gardening, and watching the latest on PBS Masterpiece Theatre. I’ve been a longtime resident of Fort Collins, though I come from an international family, and grew up wanting to be a Ram at Colorado State University.  I’m excited to put my experience and eager mind to work with all the various intriguing tasks encompassed in my position. Now that I’ve joined you all at the wonderful MIP department, I have a new place on campus to call home!”

Ralph Smith won the August Xplore photo of the week in the Coloradoan. Great picture Ralph!

Click here to see the larger photo: http://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/sports/outdoors/2015/08/21/august-xplore-photo-contest/32147013/

MIP Summer Adventures: Hannah Clark made her way to Mount Oxford and Monarch

My riding buddy and I have a saying, "Ears or it didn't happen!", so we take pictures through our horse's ears. This one is of Mount Oxford (and possibly also Belford) from a famous trail in Colorado: the Colorado Trail (500+ miles from Littleton to Durango).

Jason Cummings demonstrates the various prerequisites for getting a job as an RA in the Slayden lab...

Omar Z. Garcia passed away at 22 weeks on May 28th, 2015.

"We were gonna have a baby, but we had an angel instead." - Selene Garcia

The Prion Research Center is pleased to announce the 1st Annual Strides for CJD Satellite Event! This event supports the families and friends of individuals affected by this neurodegenerative disease.

When: October 31st

Where: Jack Christiansen Track

Register at: www.strides4cjd.com

RMB-ASM Meeting

The RMB-ASM meeting will take place on Saturday, October 27th, 2015 at 9:00 AM at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood. Click here to see more information and to register:

images/RMB Fall 2015_meeting registration.pdf.

"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

-Donald Trump

Edit creates an interesting, non-photoshopped image during her visit to Bolivia

Alternative Captions

1.  Kinda gives the phrases ‘Let’s have lunch with Edit’ or ‘Boy, Edit really chewed me out today” a whole new perspective…
2. “Waiter – there’s a guy in my soup”
3. MIP’s entry for ‘CANnibals around the Oval”
4. Edit ruining her chances to become a celebrity spokesperson for “Spoons” restaurant
5. Submit your own

It's A Risky Job

This is what Collette Hageman did (literally!) one week after she found out she'd be the new MIP news production editor……

Maura Andrews (Microbiology MS-B Program alumnus 2015) was accepted into the National Biosafety and Biosecurity Training Program at NIH. This is quite an accomplishment since they only accept 2-4 students per year.   Congratulations Maura!

Jenny Malmberg won the competative Linda Munson Fellowship for Wildlife Pathology Research offered through the ACVP/STP Coalition for Veterinary Pathology Fellows. Congratulations!

MIP Undergrad wins poster award at regional meeting

Kevin Martin was awarded 3rd place undergraduate poster for his poster entitled “Heterologous expression of cyclic di-GMP metabolic genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa” at the ASM-TriBranch meeting in April held at Fort Lewis College. Kevin performed his work in the Borlee laboratory.  Congratulations Kevin!

Prize-Winning Undergraduate Synthetic Microbiologists!!!!

The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is the premiere student competition in Synthetic Biology in the world.  We are thrilled to report that CSU's iGEM team, including 3 MIP microbiology undergraduates (Chauncy Hinshaw, Adriana Collings and Dakota Hawthorne) won a silver medal at this year’s iGEM Giant Jamboree at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston!  Dr. Claudia Gentry-Weeks helped to supervise the team.  Congratulations Chauncy, Adriana and Dakota!

New RFA for R21 grants to explore mycobacterial immune reactions, particularly in HIV infected individuals
Talk about an FOA that’s right up our alley, eh?  Check it out at
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-15-360.html. 
The due date in January 11, 2016.

Consider applying for an administrative supplement to your NIH grant
NIH has a track record for approving extra funding to existing NIH awards to (1) promote reentry into biomedical research careers http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/
traincareer/pages/reentry.aspx and 2) to promote diversity in research http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/
traincareer/pages/diversitysupp.aspx

Need a Tutor?

Need a free MIP tutor this semester? Click below to see the full list of free tutors.

images/tutors Fall 15.pdf

New Grant Awards

Delphi Chatterjee, “Nanotrap Sensitivity Enhancement of Lipoarabinomannan ("LAM") in Urine”, Ceres Nanosciences, Inc.

Edward Hoover, “Biomedical Research Training for Veterinarians”, HHS-NIH-National Institutes of Health.

Gregory Ebel, “Testing of Mosquito Pools for West Nile Virus, City of Fort Collins, 2015”, City of Fort Collins, “Novel Trap for Ticks and Fleas Incorporating a CO2 Generator”, TDA Research, Inc. & "Quasispecies Dynamics in Arbovirus Persistence Emergence and Fitness", HHS-NIH-NIAID-Allergy & Infect Diseases.

Karen Dobos, “Role of Gamma/Delta T Cells in Vaccine Induced Immunity”, Saint Louis University.

Mark  Zabel, “Molecular Mechanisms of Peripheral Prion Pathogenesis”, HHS-NIH-Neurological Disorders & Stroke.

Susan VandeWoude, “Impacts of Landscape Structure, Host Demography, and Management Interventions on Disease Dynamics”, NSF - National Science Foundation & "Feline Foamy Virus Infections: Implications in Feline Renal Disease and Retroviral Co-Infections", Morris Animal Foundation

Bradley Borlee, “Burkholderia Pseudomallei Library Copy Preparation”, American Type Culture Collection.

Dean Crick, “Menaquinone Biosynthesis: A Drug Target in Gram-Positive Bacteria”, HHS-NIH-NIAID-Allergy & Infect Diseases.

Ian Orme, “Recombinant Yeast-based T-cell Vaccines for TB Infection”, GlobeImmune, Inc..

Ramesh Akkina, “In Vivo Gene Therapy for HIV using Aptamers that Target Reverse Transcriptase”, University of Missouri.

Randall Basaraba, “Disrupting Biofilm Formation to Improve TB Drug Treatment”, HHS-NIH-NIAID-Allergy & Infect Diseases.

Rick Sladen, “Overcoming Resistance by the Application of Born to Ribosomal Inhibitors”, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

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