Microbiology, Immunology & Pathology
NEWSLETTER


Volume 5, Issue 6
June 2008


No, this isn't the starting lineup of the MIP faculty baseball team. Rather, congratulations to the following nine faculty on their upcoming promotions and/or tenure decisions:

  • Gerry Callahan has received promotion to Full Professor
  • Susan Deines has received promotion to Associate Professor with tenure
  • RoxAnn Karkhoff-Schweizer has received tenure
  • Anne Lenaerts has received promotion to Associate Professor
  • Pat Schultheiss has received tenure
  • Ric Slayden has received promotion to Associate Professor
  • Terry Spraker has received tenure
  • Erica Suchman has received tenure
  • Sue VandeWoude has received promotion to Full Professor

Hi, I'm Janet Bebell and I was delighted to accept an offer to become the MIP Senior Business Administrator. My father, Dr. Cliff Bebell, was a professor and department head at CSU-Pueblo during his career and is also delighted that his CPA daughter is finally working in an academic department.

I'm a Metropolitan State College graduate and started my career in public accounting doing auditing and tax. When I got my CPA license and came to my senses, I left public accounting for private industry. During my career I've been a controller for two start-up companies, developed software in MS Access and led my companies/clients through many software conversions over the years. Although others might perceive me as just another financial professional, I am most proud of having skills in management and technology as well as financial expertise. I am skilled at identifying issues and creating solutions.

With that industry background, I was hired two years ago by the CSU Controller to become one of three Campus Service Representatives-a completely new concept at CSU. Our goal was to create a collaborative atmosphere between central administration and campus, utilize our financial expertise to assist campus areas in endeavors and provide financial oversight. Many of you know me (or have heard of me) since the College of Vet Med is one of the areas I supported. I'm excited about this opportunity to join MIP in facing a challenging future for both research and higher education and joining with you in finding solutions for those challenges.

On a personal note, I'm a mother of four and grandmother of four. I treasure my friends and family relationships and love to just hang out together. I received a wii for Mother's Day and am enjoying this new generation of video game systems.


Hi There! I am Kelly Belden, your new Microbiology Facility Office Manager. I grew up in eastern Colorado and western Nebraska and graduated from East High School in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I much prefer the beauty of Colorado! Prior to coming to CSU, I worked as a real estate closer for twenty years, and as an Office Manager and senior (not due to my age!) real estate closer for the last ten years of that career. Coming to CSU was a change for me, but definitely a change for the better! I enjoy working with all the aspects of pre and post awards and the great department we have.

My husband and I have 5 kids and 5 grandkids, ages 6-18 months, with 1 on the way. We enjoy getting together with all of the kids and grandkids for family dinners when possible. In my spare time, I love to quilt and take photographs for the great outdoors. I have combined the two hobbies into one - Memory Quilts with photos of family, etc. on the fabric for special occasions, anniversaries, graduations or "just because".

I look forward to working with the great Faculty, Staff and Students of Microbiology! Please stop by to I can put faces with all of the names I hear everyday. Thanks!


We are pleased to announce that Colleen Duncan has accepted the Assistant Professor of Anatomic Pathology position. Colleen will begin her appointment on January 1, 2009.


Congratulations to Kristen Ruckman who has been selected to participate in the 2008 ASM Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship Program. The fellowship will support her honors thesis work integrating microbiology into elementary education and also comes with a two-year ASM membership and up to $1000 travel to the 2009 ASM Conference on Undergraduate Education.


Congratulations to Drs. Charlie Calisher and Barry Beaty for being co-authors on the paper:

"Yates, T.L., Mills, J.N., Parmenter, C.A., Ksiazek, T.G., Parmenter, R.R., Vande Castle, J.R., Calisher, C.H., Nichol, S.T., Abbott, K.D., Young, J.C., Morrison, M.L., Beaty, B.J., Dunnum, J.L., Baker, R.J., Salazar-Bravo, J., and Peters, C.J. The ecology and evolutionary history of an emergent disease: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. BioScience, 52:989-998, 2002"

This study has been selected for the 2008 Ecological Society of America (ESA)'s Sustainability Science Award. The ESA presents the award each year to authors of a scholarly work that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability. The award will be presented at the annual ESA meeting in August.


  • Ying Bai, M.D. can now be called "Dr. Dr." because she successfully defended her PhD dissertation on May 14. Her advisor is Dr. Charles Calisher.

MIP Publications Late April - early May 2008


Dr. Pat Schultheiss has been hard at work re-organizing and expanding the pathology courses for first and second year PVM program. Look for some very significant changes/improvements beginning Spring 2009. The entire first year spring semester course will now be dedicated solely to general pathology. The two semesters of the second year course will now cover systemic aspects - including an extra credit hour to effectively cover pathology of the endocrine and reproductive systems. These changes will make it easier for students to first learn the basic concepts of general pathology and then take the next step of applying those concepts to understand disease. Thanks Dr. Schultheiss for all your efforts to keep our pathology educational efforts at the cutting edge. It's probably not a coincidence that you can't spell PAThology without P-A-T!


We're pleased to announce the winners of this year's MIP faculty committee elections:

Promotion, Tenure and Reappointment Committee

Gerry Callahan - 3 yr term begins 12/15/08
Sue VandeWoude - 3 yr term begins 12/15/08
Terry Spraker - 2 yr term begins 12/15/08

Advisory Committee

John Belisle - 3 yr term begins 8/08
Jeff Wilusz - 3 yr term begins 8/08

Graduate Education Committee

Ramesh Akkina - 3 yr term begins 8/08
Carol Wilusz - 3 yr term begins 8/08

Undergraduate Education Committee

Mark Zabel - 3 yr term begins 8/08


Hail to the
editor-in-Chief

Jeff Wilusz has been named Editor-in-Chief of a new journal called ‘WIRES-RNA’ (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews - RNA). This journal is part of a major new series from Wiley-Blackwell publishers designed to combine the powerful features of traditional reference books and review journals into a compelling format to support cross-disciplinary collaborative research efforts.


College Research Council Grants Awarded to 7 MIP Researchers

Congratulations to the following MIP researchers who were awarded grants by the CVMBS College Research Council for 2008/2009.

  • Randy Basaraba, "Oxidative Stress in the Pathogenesis of Tuberculosis in Tobacco Smoke Exposed Mice"
  • Carol Blair, "Genetic Approaches to Early Events in Dengue Virus Infection of Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes"
  • Lars Eisen, "Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Dengue Outbreaks"
  • Doreene Hyatt, "Comparison of Bacterial Growth and Inhibition Between Commercially Available Raw and Pasteurized Milk Inoculated with Important Milk-Borne Pathogens"
  • Christine Olver, "Malaria Receptor Discovery Using Membrane Proteomics"
  • Diane Ordway, "Immunological Characterization of MDR-TB"
  • Joel Rovnak, "Characterize the Effect of rv-cyclin/cdk3 Interaction on Cell Proliferation"


  • Complete all ACARD purchases by June 24th
  • All invoices for Acard purchases must be received by the department by June 30th, 2008 to be charged to FY08.
  • All travel vouchers with an end trip date of June 30, 2008 must be submitted to the department by June 20th, 2008.

Annual CSU July Payroll Shenanigans

Salaried Employees: June paychecks will be deposited on July 1.
Hourly employees: Paychecks for the pay period ending June 6th will be deposited on July 1st - NOT June 20th.

If you have questions please contact Joanne Robel, Payroll Manager at (970) 491-5853 or email hrs_payroll@mail.colostate.edu.


Congratulations to the following MIP'ers who were among the 50,000+ that participated in the 30th Bolder Boulder 10K race on Memorial Day:

  • Carol Blair
  • Patrick Brennan
  • Karen Dobos-Elder
  • Colleen Duncan
  • Nick Haley

Congratulations to Angie Morrison (Fall 2007 CMB Program graduate from the Wilusz2 lab) on her April wedding in Hawaii to Ryan Dreier.



Looking for cheap, effective monoclonal antibodies against your favorite protein?

The Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB) is a non-profit resource developed by the NIH that banks and distributes hybridomas and the monoclonal antibodies they produce AT COST (e.g., $25, rather than $250 to $700, per ml of supernatant, and $135 rather than $350 to $450 for hybridoma cell lines). The majority of their current collection is against animal cell targets.

DSHB would also like your help with a new initiative - the generatation of a second hybridoma bank, the DSHB-Microbe, that will collect, maintain and distribute AT COST hybridomas and monoclonals against antigens of viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. If you have generated any hybridomas against animal cell antigens or against viral, bacterial, fungal or protozoan antigens, consider banking them with DSHB for distribution (you would still own and can commercialize them; customers cannot). Also, if you know of hybridomas that you would like made available at low cost and high quality to researchers, let DSHB know their names, their target molecules, and the scientists who generated them. DSHB will contact the scientists and try to secure the hybridomas for distribution.

Check out the DSHB web page.


Colorado State University is now a member of the Sigma RNAi Partnership Program. This means significantly reduced prices for MIP researchers on RNAi reagents. For example, sets of five bacterial clones encoding shRNAs targeting your favorite gene can be purchased for $195 per set (list price $495), or $89 per clone (list price $250). The program also has additional benefits for MIP researchers including special pricing on Sigma Mission TRC collections, etc.

Look for your favorite gene at the Sigma Aldrich Website



June 12, 2008: Six months into the project...





"A father carries pictures where his money used to be."

~Author Unknown


The Incredible Hulk movie opened this weekend
    Alternate Captions:
  1. The "CSU Goes Green" guy's alter ego
  2. Jim Abraham would like to remind everyone in MIP what could happen if you are not careful with the radioactivity in your lab
  3. If you stare at this long enough, doesn’t Mr. Hulk look like a cross between Jim Perry and Bill Wheat?
  4. “$15 bucks to check a bag?????   Friendly skies my…….”
  5. Submit your own


Click Here for the questions to MIPuzzle #31
Click Here for the answers to MIPuzzle #31

  • Electronic Grant Submissions: Phase-In of the New Abode Format. Hope you haven't gotten too comfortable with the NIH Pure Edge electronic forms for grant submissions. Starting this summer, NIH will be begin to phase out the Pure Edge forms by issuing two FOAs that require submission on new Adobe-based forms. If all goes well, a formal transition to Adobe forms is scheduled to begin in December 2008. For more information, check out the Electronic Grant submission timeline
  • NIH Standard Cover Letter Format for grant applications: The Center for Scientific Review encourages you to use NIH's new Suggested Cover Letter Format to request assignment of your grant application to an Institute/Center and/or a study section. NIH receives tens of thousands of applications each year, so having your request -- and your reasons for it -- in a standardized format will help CSR officials assign your application. You can find the full instructions on the cover letter format for electronic applications in "Section 5.2. Cover Letter Component" of theSF424 Grant Application Guide.
  • How efficient are you at using PubMed? To make sure you're getting the most out of PubMed searches, check out the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Online Training. The site contains short tutorials with tips to make searches more efficient.  It’s also a great resource to introduce new students to this invaluable database.
  • Need info on funded NIH grants? Check out NIH's new Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool. RePORT contains up-to-date data on NIH's research and development activities. And is also the new home for the CRISP  (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects) database.
  • Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (DDIG). Proposals whose focus falls within the scope of any cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) or in the scientific area of animal behavior supported by the Behavioral Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) are eligible. For more information, check out the DDIG Website.

New Grant Awards

John Spencer, "Biomarkers for Prediction of Leprosy Reaction: A Prospective Study on Cellular and Humeral Host Responses in Brazil...", Leiden University Medical Center.
John Spencer, "Examination of Lipoarabinomannan-Specific Monoclonal Antibodies", University of Alberta.
John Spencer, "Production of CS-35", InBios International, Inc.
Karen Dobos-Elder, "Recognition of Mtb-Infected Cells by CD8+ T Lymphocytes", Oregon Health Sciences University.


JUNE 2008

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Acard and Travel Docs due to Dept Offices
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Fiscal Year End
       

JULY 2008

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Independence Day! Univ Office Closed
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