Biological Sciences Blog

Several Biological Sciences students playing in the 4th Keweenaw Honors String Festival (Violapalooza)

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KSO-KeweenawHonorsStringFestivalFour students from a variety of Biological Sciences majors are participating in this Saturday’s Rozsa performance of  the 4th Keweenaw Honors String Festival (Violapalooza).

 

 

 

The four students are:

*Laura Deters, Bioinformatics playing the viola
*Erin McKenzie, Biological Sciences playing the cello
*Elise Cheney-Makens, Biochemistry playing the cello
*Megan Schluentz, Biological Sciences playing the cello

The show will be streamed live at the Visual and Performing Arts web site. Tickets and additional information about the performance are available on the Michigan Tech Events Calendar.

 

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Werner, X. Tang, featured in Michigan Tech Lode

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Dr. Thomas Werner and Dr. Xiaoqing Tang are featured in two separate articles in the last couple of week in the Michigan Tech Lode.

The article on Dr. Werner’s research titled “Inside Look: Fruit Flies, Color Patterns and Cancer” can be found in the 8 October 2015 issue.

The article on Dr. Tang’s research titled: “Solving the mystery: what connects microRNA and proteins to the pancreas” can be found in the 1 October 2016 issue.

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Updated: Biology students do well in LSTI 1st Annual Research Forum

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The First Annual Research Forum sponsored by the Life Science and Technology Institute was held Sept. 24 and 25. Twenty-seven graduate and undergraduate students conducting research in life science, biotechnology, human health and related areas presented posters.

Thank you to participants, the judges and all who helped with the successful forum. A list of LSTI award winners is as follows:

Graduate Grand Prize

Sanaz Habibi (ChE) “Do Faradaic Reactions cause Hemolysis in Non-Uniform Alternating Current Electric Fields,” Advisor: Minerick

Graduate Merit Awards

  • Ramkumar Mohan (Biology)—”MicroRNA-483, A Differentially Expressed MicroRNA Between Pancreatic Beta Cells and Alpha Cells,” Advisor: Zhang/Tang
  • Ni Fan (Chem)—”Glycan-Dependent Mutual and Reversible Sequestration,” Advisor: Dam
  • Robert Larson (KIP)—”High Salt Intake Augments Excitability of Pre-sympathetic PVN Neurons,” Advisor: Chen

Undergraduate Grand Prize

Jared Pecore (Biology)—”The Mechanisms Underlying α-Amanitin Resistance in Drosophila melanogaster: A Microarray Analysis,” Advisor: Werner

Undergraduate Merit Award

Dakota Anderson (KIP)—”Upper-Extremity Eccentric Exercise: Increases in Muscle Strength and Power at Moderate Training Intensities” 

UPDATED: Here is a photo gallery of  participants.

Taken from Tech Today

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New class offering: Cancer Biology, BL4752, Spring 2016

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Cancer Biology imageNew class offering: Cancer Biology, BL4752, Spring 2016

• Do you know that cancer is the second leading cause of death?
• In 2013 alone, 14.9 million people had cancer & 8.2 million people died from cancer
• Do you know of anyone who has cancer?
• Are you interested in learning what causes cancer or the molecular changes that lead to cancer?

• Take BL 4752; learn about the biology of cancer with Dr. Tumban

• Course Objectives: Students will have an understanding of:
• the biological/non-­‐biological agents that cause cancer
• how these agents contribute to different cancers
• the molecular mechanism(s) leading to the disease
• how the circulatory and lymphatic systems affect the disease
• current treatment and therapeutic approaches

The prereqs are BL3012 Essential Cell Biology or BL4370 Cell Biology or BE2400 Cellular and Molecular Biology.

Cancer Biology Flyer

 

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UPDATED: Solving the Mystery That Connects MicroRNA and Proteins in the Pancreas

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Dr Tang’s research is featured this week on Michigan Tech’s home page.    

By Allison Mills MicroRNA strands were once thought of as junk genetic material. Now, researchers know that these small structures help program surrounding genes, affecting everything from eye color to cancer. For diabetes, one such connection is a classic whodunit—it was miR-483 with the SOCS3 protein in the pancreas. Unraveling this mystery is the subject of a new paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Pancreatic Cells

Xiaoqing Tang, one of the study co-authors and an assistant professor of biology at Michigan Technological University, is poised. She is as calm as you’d expect a sleuth to be, and she explains the complex interactions of pancreatic microRNA with the meticulousness of a crime scene investigator.

First, Tang says, we have to start with the big picture—the pancreatic cells where these genes interact.

“We’re interested in the alpha and beta cells,” says Tang, explaining that beta cells secrete insulin and alpha cells secrete glucagon, which regulate our blood sugar levels. A normal ratio is generally 80 percent beta cells and 15 percent alpha cells. “In type 2 diabetic patients, the ratio is imbalanced and we see beta cell loss and alpha cell expansion,” the researcher says.

Balancing these hormones is difficult to coordinate because several organs—the liver and brain as well as the pancreas—are involved. But the real nuance is within the alpha and beta cells themselves.

More at the University News site

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Updated – picture locations for Lake Superior Explorations BL5421

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Great Lakes Exploration

Updated with  a map LakeSuperiorExplore_photolocationsshowing the GPS locations for the pictures taken by Colin Brooks.  Each color represents a different day; each dot indicates the GPS location that Colin’s GPS linked camera recorded. They covered a lot of water!

 

See photos from the BL5421 course Lake Superior Explorations on the GLRC Flickr page.

Also see the list of YouTube videos including aboard the research vessel as well as underwater footage.

BL5421 Lake Superior Explorations for Graduate Students Summer 2015
Photos by Emil Groth and Colin Brooks
This is a field intensive Biological Sciences course at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University with significant time spent on research vessels (R/V Agassiz or NOAA R/V 5501) where students will learn the use of a variety of state-of-the-art techniques to characterize biological communities and measure important physical and biological processes.Instructors:Nancy A. Auer, Amy Marcarelli, Gary Fahnenstiel, Casey Huckins, (all Biological Sciences.) and Marty Auer (CEE) and Guy Meadows, Director of GLRC
.Explorations will take students to several Lake Superior environments, weather permitting, including the Ontonagon River, Huron and Keweenaw Bays and several sites along the western shoreline of the Keweenaw Peninsula. This voyage of discovery will target ecosystem processes, seeking signals of their presence along boundaries in time and space, including day/night sampling and over gradients found at the interface between tributaries and the open lake, along the major axis of embayments and across the coastal margin.Areas of coverage include: Collection of standard light, temperature, DO profiles, use of drogues/drifters to track current, Autonomous vehicle application, Sonar profiles, Primary production by microbes and algae, day and night comparisons of zooplankton, benthos and fish, and ROVs to observe these organisms, and standard PONAR and sediment collection.

 

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