Volume 7, Issue 7, July 2010

8 MIPers who didn't follow Mr. Fillmore's Advice:

Bethany Bolling defended her thesis entitled, "Flavivirus Surveillance in Mosquitoes from Northern Colorado, with the Detection and Description of Two Insect-Specific Flaviviruses", on March 31. Her advisor is Dr. Carol Blair, Co-Advisor is Dr. Chet Moore.

Katie Poole-Smith defended her thesis entitled, "Isolation and characterization of Dengue Virus membrane-associated replication complexes from Aedes aegypti", on May 17. Her advisor is Dr. Carol Blair.

Jaclyn Scott, defended her thesis entitled, "Analysis of virus-derived small RNAs reveals that the RNA silencing response to flavivirus infection differs dramatically between C6/36 and AAG2 mosquito cell lines" on June 17. Dr. Carol Blair is her advisor

Krystle Reagan defended her thesis on June 23, entitled, "Identification fo Culex tarsalis D7 salivary protein and role of salivary protein vaccine on subsequent West Nile Virus infection. Her advisor is Dr. Carol Blair.

Angela Bosco-Lauth defended her thesis entited, "Japanese encephalitis virus: Pathogenesis and Immunity" on July 2. Her advisor is Dr. Richard Bowen.

Jonathan Arzt defended his thesis entitled, "The Early Pathogenesis of Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Aerosol-Inoculated Cattle" on July 6. His advisor is Dr. Gary Mason.

Kevin Sokoloski defended his thesis on July 8 entitled, "Sindbis Virus usurps the cellular HuR protein to stabilize its transcripts and promote infection of mammalian and mosquito cells". His advisor is Dr. Jeffrey Wilusz and co-advisor is Dr. Carol Wilusz.

Nicholas Haley defended his thesis on July 9 entitled, "CWD: A Model for Prion Transmission via Saliva and Urine". His advisor is Dr. Edward Hoover

Congratulations to Ashley Linton for being selected to receive a Nell Mondy Fellowship from the Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) society! Ashley was one of ten highly qualified women selected for awards from the 266 fellowship applications that the GWIS reviewed.

The inaugural issue of the new RNA review journal WIREs-RNA edited by MIP's own Jeff Wilusz was published this month.

Check it out at the
WIREs-RNA website

(and congratulate Ian Orme (mouse) and Alexa Dickson (cells) for contributing to the cover art)

On June 20^th 100 members of the extended MIP family spent a Sunday afternoon in the Park – the ballpark that is – watching the Rockies take on the Milwaukee Brewers. Despite the fact that we all know that Colorado brewers can run circles around Milwaukee’s finest, the visiting team exploded for 5 runs off Manny Corpas in the 8th to beat our Rockies 6-1. Highlights on that hot afternoon included a foul ball off the bat of Jason Giambi that landed a few feet away from Erin and Dave Napier, an unexpected birthday message for John Spencer (see photo above) and a tornado warning in the 8th inning (that may have been the gods warning Rockies fans about the impending Brewers rally).
Check out some additional photos from the game

In the News...

Rebecca McGill, a Micro major and single mom, who has been working with Project Self-Sufficiency (PS-S), was given a car on July 14th by Houska Automotive as part of a challenge the automotive group is making to encourage local dealerships to help out students in the PS-S program. Thanks Houska!
Read the July 12, 2010 Coloradoan Article

Liposome-siRNA-Peptide Complexes Cross the Blood-Brain Barrier and Significantly Decrease PrP^C on Neuronal Cells and PrP^RES in Infected Cell Cultures

Bruce Pulford, Natalia Reim, Aimee Bell, Jessica Veatch, Genevieve Forster, Heather Bender, Crystal Meyerett, Scott Hafeman, Brady Michel, Theodore Johnson, A. Christy Wyckoff, Gino Miele, Christian Julius, Jan Kranich, Alan Schenkel, Steven Dow and Mark Zabel

PLoS One , June 2010, e11085

Move over Fed-Ex, Bruce Pulford and 16 coworkers just invented ‘Fat-Ex’. If you need to send something quickly and efficiently to the brain, conventional old fashioned delivery methods just don’t work well enough. Fat-Ex is the solution to your shipping problem.

Prion diseases like scrapie, CJD, mad cow and CWD are neurological diseases that are currently untreatable. Over the last ~17 years, it’s been known that if you delete the PrP^C gene from animals, you can make them resistant to prion diseases. While we can’t easily (or ethically) delete a gene from a person’s DNA, the 2006 Nobel Prize-winning discovery of RNA interference outlines the use of small RNAs that target mRNAs and dramatically reduce expression from specific genes. There have also been hints in the literature that these small RNAs can be used to knock down PrP^C expression and prevent prion diseases. The key question to make this an attractive therapeutic candidate is how to effectively deliver these small RNAs to the brain. Here’s where Fat-Ex steps up to the plate.

Mark Zabel, Steve Dow, Alan Schenkel, et al got together and figured out a way to use cationic liposomes (which consist of lipids (aka fat) to package small RNAs associated with a peptide that will specifically hone the complex to the acetylcholine receptor that is found on neuronal cells. In a nutshell, a simple 29 residue peptide targets the complex to brain cells, a positively charged 9 amino acid tail attracts the small RNA to the peptide, and the lipid vehicle protects it all from degradation on its way to the brain. Sound simple? Well it is – and that’s what makes it elegant. In this paper the group presents very nice data arguing for the stability of the complex in serum over ~4 hrs, effective (~85%) and specific delivery of the small RNA to neuronal cells resulting in impressive (70% or more) knock down of PrP^C expression. Similar efficiencies were obtained when the complexes were injected into the tail vein of mice. Importantly, delivery of this small RNA drug was shown to effectively treat cultured neuronal cells that were chronically infected with two different prions.

So why did we pick (yet another) prion study as our coveted MIPublication of the Month® - particularly this month in the face of stiff competition from some excellent papers by the Schweizer, Lenaerts and Wilusz labs? First, this study presents a clever adaptation of existing technologies to create an exciting potential therapeutic avenue for prion diseases which are currently untreatable. Second, at press time this paper has already had almost 600 downloads from the Plos One website – an impressive number particularly for a relatively small field like prion biology. Third, this paper has a ‘Guinness Book of MIP World Record’ 15 MIP researchers – from undergraduates to faculty – listed on the author line. Finally, we bet that this technology will have numerous applications in addition to prion projects. So stop by the Zabel or Dow Labs and ask ‘What can Fat-Ex do for you?’

MIP Publications Late June 2010 - Early July 2010

Ryan GJ, Hoff DR, Driver ER, Voskuil MI, Gonzalez-Juarrero M, Basaraba RJ, Crick DC, Spencer JS, Lenaerts AJ.  Multiple M. tuberculosis phenotypes in mouse and guinea pig lung tissue revealed by a dual-staining approach.  PLoS One. 2010 Jun 14;5(6):e11108.

Garcia-Rejon JE, Blitvich BJ, Farfan-Ale JA, Loroño-Pino MA, Chi Chim WA, Flores-Flores LF, Rosado-Paredes E, Baak-Baak C, Perez-Mutul J, Suarez-Solis V, Fernandez-Salas I, Beaty BJ.  Host-feeding preference of the mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, in Yucatan State, Mexico.  J Insect Sci. 2010 Mar;10:32.

Ireland R, Olivares-Zavaleta N, Warawa JM, Gherardini FC, Jarrett C, Hinnebusch BJ, Belisle JT, Fairman J, Bosio CM.  Effective, broad spectrum control of virulent bacterial infections using cationic DNA liposome complexes combined with bacterial antigens.  PLoS Pathog. 2010 May 27;6(5):e1000921.

Calisher CH.  The US struggles with health care (and other) issues.  Croat Med J. 2010 Jun 15;51(3):267-70.

Ioerger TR, Feng Y, Ganesula K, Chen X, Dobos KM, Fortune S, Jacobs WR Jr, Mizrahi V, Parish T, Rubin E, Sassetti C, Sacchettini JC.  Variation among genome sequences of H37Rv strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from multiple laboratories.  J Bacteriol. 2010 Jul;192(14):3645-53.

Propst KL, Mima T, Choi KH, Dow SW, Schweizer HP.  A Burkholderia pseudomallei DeltapurM mutant is avirulent in immunocompetent and immunodeficient animals: candidate strain for exclusion from select-agent lists.
Infect Immun. 2010 Jul;78(7):3136-43.

Redente EF, Higgins DM, Dwyer-Nield LD, Orme IM, Gonzalez-Juarrero M, Malkinson AM.  Differential polarization of alveolar macrophages and bone marrow-derived monocytes following chemically and pathogen-induced chronic lung inflammation.  J Leukoc Biol. 2010 Jul;88(1):159-68.

Pulford B, Reim N, Bell A, Veatch J, Forster G, Bender H, Meyerett C, Hafeman S, Michel B, Johnson T, Wyckoff AC, Miele G, Julius C, Kranich J, Schenkel A, Dow S, Zabel MD.  Liposome-siRNA-peptide complexes cross the blood-brain barrier and significantly decrease PrP on neuronal cells and PrP in infected cell cultures.  PLoS One. 2010 Jun 14;5(6):e11085.

Lee JE, Lee JY, Wilusz J, Tian B, Wilusz CJ.  Systematic analysis of cis-elements in unstable mRNAs demonstrates that CUGBP1 is a key regulator of mRNA decay in muscle cells. PLoS One. 2010 Jun 21;5(6):e11201.

On July 1^st MIP facility offices popped the cork off of some new toner cartridges to celebrate the successful completion of fiscal year FY10 and welcome in FY11. Please take some time out of your busy schedules to stop by your facility office and thank the members of the hard working pit crew that work behind the scenes to keep our department out front in the race to provide the very best teaching, service and research in the university. You guys and gals are the best!

	Clare Hoover Anatomic Pathology Originally from Mechanicsburg, PA, Clare has been in Fort Collins since mid-June. She is interested in studying neurodegenerative diseases and infectious diseases. In her free time, Clare enjoys cooking, running, tennis, and reading.
	Valerie Johnson Microbiology Valerie is originally from New Hampshire and has been in Fort Collins since mid-June. She is interested in studying sepis, but in her free time enjoys yoga, hiking, and movies.
	Alana Pavuk Anatomic Pathology Originally from North Carolina, Alana has been in Fort Collins since June 24. Her research interests include prions and mycobacteria. When not working she enjoys running and hiking.
	Paula Schaffer Anatomic Pathology Paula is originally from California and has been in Fort Collins since June. Her research interests include Pathological aspects of zoonotic infections, lab animal models of diseases and foreign animal disease. Paula enjoys trail riding with her mustang and swing dancing around town.
	Kelly Walton Comparative Medicine Originally from Berlin Heights, OH, Kelly has been in Fort Collins since the end of June. She is interested in studying infectious disease. In her free time Kelly enjoys hiking, backpacking, reading and horseback riding

Read why ‘Bikers and Beer’ make our fair city
#6 in Money Magazine's
Best places to live in the USA

A big THANK YOU goes out to Dr. Carol Blair for adopting Marcia Bogg's kitties!

MIP now has a blog called "The MIP Experience" that allows Faculty and Students to share their experiences as an MIP'er with those interested in learning more about what we do. The blog is a useful source of information for potential students and an interesting way to learn about what your peers are doing!

Currently MIP Undergrads Becca Timmons, Erin Breland, and Alex Griffith are blogging about their awesome summer research experiences. Be sure to check out The MIP Experience and read about what it is like to be a student researcher in MIP. Also, if you have an upcoming MIP Experience that you'd like to blog about just contact Erin Napier and she'll get you setup to start blogging!

2010-2011 PARKING PERMITS

CSU Office of Parking Management will not be mailing out notices to renew your annual parking permit which expires on July 31, 2010.

You can purchase your new permit online at the Parking Services Website
OR
You can purchase at the CSU Parking Management Office now located on the southwest corner of the Lake Street Parking Garage, 1508 Center Ave

‘School is Cool’ is a program organized and managed by Colorado State University employees to help less fortunate students of the Poudre School District afford school supplies. For just $20, you can help make a local student's educational experience more successful. This amount will sponsor a backpack filled with school supplies specifically designated for that student's grade level. For more information or to make a donation, see Karen Hofmaier in the Micro Office or visit the School is Cool website.

AIDL has joined the information superhighway and developed a a website devoted to ‘all things AIDL’. Find all your favorite AIDL researchers and see what they have been doing by checking out the new AIDL website!

Pathology Main Office Renovation

The Admin Offices located in 110 Pathology will be getting new carpet and paint the first two weeks in August. During this time Cathy Griffin and Linda Moller will be found in Pathology Room 107. Jeanette Fritzler, Andrea Guillory, Front Desk Staff, and the copier will be found in Pathology Room 109.

Local Fall Meetings Scheduled:

Mark your calendars
for these exciting upcoming local meetings this Fall:

Rocky Mtn Virology Club
Sept 24-26
Pingree Park, CO

Oct 22-23
University of Wyoming, Laramie

"I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate."

The Micro Elevator is on the Fritz* Again
(*no relation to MIP facilities coordinator Jeanette Fritzler)

Altered Versions of the Elevator Notice:

Questions for MIPuzzle #55
MIPuzzle #55 Answers

Chester Moore, "West Nile Virus Testing, City of Fort Collins, Colorado, 2010", City of Fort Collins

• New Grant Op: Partnerships for Next Generation Biodefense Diagnostics

  Got an idea for a novel, rapid and innovative clinical diagnostic technology (that does not involve nucleic acid amplification methods) to detect NIAID Category A, B, or C Priority Pathogens and toxins? If so, NIAID has an RFA just for you (applications due Nov.4). Check it out at the NIH Website.

• NIH to start a ‘new’ program to provide funds for summer student research experiences

  Word from Bethesda is that the ARRA-funded Summer Research Experiences for Students and Science Educators were such a big hit that they plan on making them a permanent grant supplement opportunity after the ARRA program has ended. So stay tuned for a new way to find funds to support research opportunities for undergraduates, etc in your laboratory.