NEWS & EVENTS

May 2008

GBG member's work “blogged” in the New York Times. Read more!

GBG genome reseachers' work on brown bat featured in Genome Research

Recent research by UT Arlington genome scientists Cedric Feschotte and Ellen Pritham, both assistant professors in the Biology Department, is featured as the cover story of Genome Reserarch. The colleagues are exploring the genome of the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), a member of the vespertilionid bat family. Bats constitute more than 20 percent of existing mammalian species and the Vespertilionidae is the most diverse family with about 300 species distributed worldwide. The researchers show that vespertilionid bats, concomitantly to their diversification during the past 35 million years, have experienced successive waves of genome invasion by diverse DNA transposons, mobile genetic elements that use a cut-and-paste mechanism of transposition to spread in the organism's DNA. The level of recent DNA transposon activity reflected in the genome of Myotis lucifugus is unprecedented among mammals and at least one of the transposon identified in the study appears to be in the midst of its expansion in natural populations. To see the cover and read a short description of the research, as well as a link to the full article, see this Web site.

April 2008

Undergraduate Research
Arturo Menchaca and Dillon Cawley (Christensen Lab) have received the 2007-2008 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award. They will receive their awards Tuesday, April 22 at 7pm in the Bluebonnet Ballroom in the University Center. Congrats guys!!!

Fellowships
Undergraduate GBG researcher John Pham has been selected as a 2008 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Undergraduate Research Fellow. This award includes a $2000.00 summer stipend as well as travel costs to participate in the 2009 ASM General Meeting. Way to go John!

GBG graduate student Claudia Marquez has received an Honorable Mention for her application to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Nearly 10,000 students apply annually to this program. In 2008, 913 fellowships were awarded and 1639 applicants given the Honorable Mention distinction. Congratulations, Claudia!

March 2008

GBG students win awards in 2008 ACES competition!
Provost's Award ($200) - John K. Pace, II (Quantitative Biology) Title: Space Invaders! Repeated horizontal transfers of a DNA transposon in mammals and other tetrapods Faculty Mentor(s): Cedric Feschotte Group
President's Poster Award ($200) - Claudia P. Marquez (Biology) Title: Phantom a new family of Mutator transposons Faculty Mentor(s): Ellen J. Pritham

NIH Grant
Dr. Maeli Melotto is a PI on a grant for 1.9 million dollars received from NIH – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The title of the proposal is “Stomate-based innate immunity against bacterial infection in Arabidopsis.” The work will be split between her lab and that of Dr. Sheng Yang He at Michigan State University.

February 2008

New Faculty Joining the GBG

Dr. John "Trey" Fondon, a research fellow in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development and biochemistry at UT Southwestern, will joined the GBG next spring semester (2009) as an Assistant Professor of Biology .

Congratulations to Paul Chippindale for his recent promotion to the rank of Professor.

January 2008

Michalak Lab research published in Science

Science magazine has published an article about reproductive isolation between biological species that graduate student John Malone and Pawel Michalak, assistant professor of biology at UT Arlington authored.

November 2007

Feschotte Lab research published in Science

Collaborative research by biologists at UT Arlington and Cornell University Boyce Thompson Institute leads to unexpected function of selfish "jumping genes" in modulating plant's response to light. The results of their research was just been published in the November 23 issue of Science. The report entitled “Transposase-Derived Transcription Factors Regulate Light Signaling in Arabidopsis” shows that two transcription factors that modulate light responses in plants have been co-opted from an ancestral transposable element or “jumping gene”. The results bring further support to the notion that selfish genetic elements have played critical roles in evolution, as first hypothesized by Barbara McClintock, who received the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her discovery of transposable elements in maize.
The research at UT Arlington involved postdoctoral associate Claudio Casola and Cedric Feschotte, while research at Cornell was conducted primarily by postdoctoral associate Rongcheng Lin and was headed by assistant professor of plant biology Haiyang Wang.

October 2007

Pritham Lab

Congratulations to undergraduates Nam Nguyen and John Pham, they both just learned that they were selected as Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Scholars (LSAMP) for Fall 2007! Way to go Nam and John!

NIH Grants

Assistant Professor Mike roner awarded $222,000 from NIH- National Center For Complementary & Alternative Medicine. Title: In Vivo Antiviral Activity of Saponins.

Assistant Professor Esther Betrán has been invited to join the Editorial Board of The Open Evolution Journal

Research Day 2007. October 19th.

September 2007

SACNAS Fellowship

Claudia Marquez (PRITHAM LAB) has just learned that she is one of five recipients of the SACNAS genome graduate student fellowship ($25,000). Claudia will start her graduate work in our program in January! Congratulations Claudia!

August 2007

Undergradute Research

A poster abstract submitted by undergraduate researcher, Claudia Marquez was selected to be presented at the 2007 SACNAS national conference to be held in Kansas City, Missouri. Her abstract received positive reviews from two panel reviewers. Way to go Claudia!

July 2007

GBG on the move

Three Pritham lab undergraduate students-- Assiatu Barrie, Claudia Marquez and John Pham attended the American Genetics Association meeting "Mechanisms of Genome Evolution". Each student presented a poster of their work and received a travel award from the conference. Ellen gave an invited talk entitled "Transposable elements and the dynamic genome".

March 2007

Honors

Pritham lab:
Student Assiatu Barrie was awarded two honors: the Undergraduate Research Award and the Allied Health Award.
Undergraduate student Omid Zare-mehrjerdi was selected as a McNair fellow.
Undergraduate student John Pham was selected as an Honor's College summer research fellow.

GRANTS FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH - A Joint Venture between UT Southwestern and UT Arlington
Assistant Professor Pavel Michalak awarded $100,000

February 2007

GBG researchers Dr. Ellen Pritham and Dr. Cedric Feschotte awarded $200,000 from NIH for a collaborative project with Dr. Jessica Kissinger at UGA on TEs and other repeats in apicomplexan genomes.

UT Arlington GBG researcher awarded grant from National Institutes of Health

Assistant Professor of Biology and member of the Genome Biology Group Dr. Cedric Feschotte has been awarded a research grant by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) The title of the project is: "Human DNA transposons: evolutionary history and genomic impact" and the total amount of this five-year award is $811,000. Feschotte is the principal investigator.

Assistant Professor Michael Roner publication on the Antiviral activity obtained from aqueous extracts of the Chilean soapbark tree (Quillaja saponaria Molina featured in Microbiology Today

January 2007

Assistant Professor Pawel Michalak has been invited to join the editorial board of PLoS One.

December 2006

New faculty Joining the GBG
Jeffery Demuth (PhD, Indiana University) will join the GBG next fall semester. Currently, he's a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Hahn lab at Indiana University.

November 2006

New Course for Spring Semester 2007

3310-003/ 5310-002 Developmental Biology

Collaborative UT Arlington-SPRING Research and Nanotechnology Transfer Program
Assistant Professor Pawel Michalak awarded $140,000 (Co-PI)

UT Metroplex Days


A series of four separate programs hosted at all the three UT campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: UT Arlington, UT Dallas and UT Southwestern. The programs are designed to create a greater awareness of the latest research in the areas of biology, medicine and bioengineering and promote greater collaborations among the scientists and engineers from academia and industry in the DFW area.

UT Arlington will be hosting UT Metroplex Days on Monday, December 4. There will be three symposia with invited speakers from UTSW, UTD and UTA: Genomics/Bioinformatics; Optical Medical Imaging; Cellular Imaging. Note the first two symposia will run in parallel in the morning, from 9h30 to 11h. Dr. Cedric Feschotte is organizing the symposium on Genomics/Bioinformatics and he has invited three outstanding scientists from UTSW and UTD to join us and present an overview of their research.

More on this event can be found at:
http://www.uta.edu/metroplexdays/index.html

There will also be a large poster session and plenty of time for interaction among participants. Finally, Professor Winfried Denk of the Max Plank Institute in Heidelberg will deliver the keynote address at a plenary session at 4 PM. In addition, tours of the research facilities on the UT Arlington campus will be conducted.
Hopefully, faculty, postdoc and grad students -especially those with interest in Genomics, Biotechnology or Biomedical Sciences- will attend this event and present posters. This is a unique opportunity to showcase our research to others in the field in the DFW area and foster potential collaborations (note: all research institutions, not just those of the UT system, and most biotech companies in the DFW area will be invited to participate). Registration is free, but required to get a complimentary lunch. It is also important for organization purposes to get a head count as accurate as possible.

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION IS NOVEMBER 15.
Register now: http://www.utmetroplexdays.org/metroplexreg.htmFor more info about the other UT Metroplex Days at UTSW and UTD can be found at: http://www.utmetroplexdays.org/

October 2006

Research Day '06
Tuesday, October 24th 2006. Registration

Research Enhancement Program
Application Due January 8, 2007

Forms
Program Guidelines >> PDF
Application Form >> PDF | WORD
Evaluation Forms >> PDF | WORD

Grants for Collaborative Research
A Joint Venture between UT Southwestern and UT Arlington. Due: January 1, 2007

Research Day '06 - Tuesday, October 24th
The Colleges of Engineering and Science at The University of Texas at Arlington are conducting Research Day ’06 in a joint effort to promote awareness of research activities currently in progress at UT Arlington. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 24 in the University Center and Nedderman Hall. Registration

September 2006

Michalak Lab: cover story for the October issue of Journal of Molecular Evolution. It also features the paper: “Sex-biased gene expression in a ZW sex determination system”. Its co-authors are Grad student John Malone and Assistant Professor Pawel Michak from the Department of Biology and Associate Professor of Mathematics D.L Hawkins.



GBG on the News
New Element - The Shorthorn

GBG Seminars
The fall 2006 GBG Seminar starts on September 8th. Now you can earn credit (BIOL 5101-001 Special Topics in Biology).

August 2006

NSF
Assistant Professor of Biology Lorraine van Waasbergen received two new NSF grant supplement monies; one for $46,827 and another for $5,000.

New courses for Fall 2006
BIOL 4308-001 / 5310-002 GENOME STRUCTURE & DYNAMICS
BIOL 5310-004 BIOINFORMATICS FOR BIOLOGISTS

July 2006

Workshop
Dallas Area Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Workshop – 2006. Call for abstracts and posters.
Date: August 29, 2006 Time: 8:00 am – 7:30 pm Location: 6000 Harry Hines Blvd., NG3 Conference Room, Southwestern Medical Center. Dallas.
Grant Award
Associate Professor Paul Chippindale and Assistant Professor Jeremy Marshall awarded $112,680 from USFWS/TPWD.

GBG on the move
The Michalak lab will be attending the American Genetics Association Annual Symposium: Genetics of Speciation. The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, July 21-24 2006
Poster: “Xenopus as a model for speciation genetics” (P. Michalak & J.H. Malone)

June 2006

Grant Award
Ph.D. student Diana L. Huestis (Marshall Lab) awarded with the Thelma Howell Memorial Scholarship from Highlands Biological Station.
Project : “Genetics of embryonic diapause in the striped ground cricket, Allonemobius socius”

Dr. Jaroslaw Krzywinski awarded $29,000 from WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

May 2006

NSF Grant Awards
Dr. Lorraine van Waasbergen awarded $155,427
Dr. Andre Pires da Silva awarded $365,000
Congratulations!

New Faculty joining the GBG
Dr. Ellen Pritham is a Research Associate in the Department of Biology, here in UTA. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Wessler Lab at the University of Georgia, Athens.


UT ARLINGTON GENOME RESEARCH FEATURED IN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES JOURNAL
The cover story for the May 23, 2006, volume of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States is a paper by Assistant Professor Cedric Feschotte, corresponding author, on a study he did with Swalpa Udit, a UT Arlington Honors College undergraduate and two genome researchers from Louisiana State University, Drs. Richard Cordaux and Mark Batzer. The study “Birth of a chimeric primate gene by capture of the transposable gene form a mobile element,” is also featured in "In This Issue" and discussed in a commentary by I. King Jordan of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.


GBG on the move
The Betran Lab attended the Genomes, Evolution, & Bioinformatics (GEB2006) conference held at Arizona State University from May 24-May 28 in Tempe, Arizona.

Bioinformatics Seminar Course offered this summer by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Contact: Nikola Stojanovic

April 2006

Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer Desktop System has arrived!

Appropriations Request for Funding in FY08
Faculty should submit to their respective Deans a Appropriations Request Form before 10/31/06.

Assistant Professor of Biology Dr Pires da Silva have been awarded a grant from the UTD-UTA Joint Institutional Seed Research Program in the amount of $10,000 from UTA and $10,000 from UTD for the proposal titled, “Understanding Trim2 and its Role in Neurodegeneration.”

See the awarded projects here

GBG on the move:
Assistant Professor of Biology Dr Pires da Silva invited speaker at Pomoma College
Title of talk: “Evolution of developmental pathways and sex determination ”

Assistant Professor of Biology Dr Elena de la Casa-Esperon has been awarded $10,000 from the UTA Research Enhancement Program.

The new Eppendorf ® Multipurpose Centrifuge 5810R has arrived!

New biology system helps analyze DNA - The Shorthorn

March 2006

The new ABI 7300 Real Time PCR System has arrived!

ACES 2006
GBG students present their research at the Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students (ACES) 2006.
Graduate student Yongsheng Bai (Betran Lab) awarded with Best Graduate Poster -2nd Place ($100).
Undergraduate student Swalpa Udit (Feschotte Lab) awarded with 2nd – Provost’s Award ($200). Congratulations!

GBG on the move:
Members of the Betran and Michalak Labs presented their research work at the 47th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Houston, Texas.

Pictures by Daiju Hoshino 2006

The Feschotte Lab attended the 1st International Conference/Workshop on Genomic Impact of Eukaryotic Transposable Elements. Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, CA, USA


New Faculty Joining the GBG
Dr. Shawn Christensen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Eickbush Lab at the University of Rochester and studies the molecular biology and evolution of the R2 retrotransposable elements.


Assistant Professor Cedric Feschotte invited speaker at 1st International Conference and Workshop Genomic Impact of Eukaryotic Transposable Elements. March 31-April 4, 2006 The Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, CA, USA
Title of talk: “Life after Death: Reincarnation of DNA Transposons into Genetic Networks. A Case Study in the Human Genome”

February 2006

Assistant Professor Cedric Feschotte invited speaker at ASM Conference on Mobile Elements, February 24-March 1, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
Title of talk: “Life after Death: Reincarnation of DNA Transposons into Genetic Networks. A Case Study in the Human Genome”

Upcoming Deadlines for Proposals with Limited Number of Submissions

Sponsor: The National Science Foundation
Program Name: Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program (IGERT) Solicitation
NSF Deadlines: Preliminary Proposal due at NSF: March 27, 2006 Full Proposal due at NSF: September 29, 2006

An internal competition will be held to select four pre-proposal teams. An internal pre-proposal must be submitted by close of business on March 6, 2006. The teams chosen to go forward will be announced on this website on March 13, 2006.

Darwin Day - Sunday Feb, 12
Charles Darwin (b. 12 Feb 1809) whose promulgation of the Theory of Evolution, or descent with modification through natural selection, has had as profound an effect on how we view and understand the natural world as any other scientific theory ever proposed.

Darwin Day, in existence since 2000, is an international celebration of Darwin's birthday (February 12) with a focus on the science and humanism that specifically relate to the work of Darwin, who remains controversial 150 years after the publication of his Origin of the Species. The year 2009 is the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of the revolutionary book's first publication.

January 2006

The GenePix Professional 4200A (Molecular Devices Corp.) has arrived!

GeneChip® Scanner 3000 7G (Affimetrix) will be up and running soon!

Claudio Casola Ph.D. joins the GBG as a PostDoc in the Betran-Feschotte Labs. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Università di Pisa, Italy.

December 2005

National Science Foundation – Major Research Instrumentation – Limited Submission
GBG's proposal chosen to go forward. See all proposals
Title: Acquisition of Automated DNA Manipulation, Standardization, and Pyrosequencing for High Throughput Sequencing and Genotyping in Genomics Research and Student Training.

November 2005

ARP Internal Competition
Assistant Professor Michael Roner chosen to go forward.
Project Title: "Nanoparticles as Vectors to Induce Mucosal Immune Responses"
Congrats Michael!

National Science Foundation – Major Research Instrumentation – Limited Submission
Posted an online web form for the NSF MRI limited submission program. Preproposals are due online by 12/7/05. UTA is limited to 3 MRI proposals (2 acquisition 1 development | including UTA collaborations/non-lead institution). Please visit the limited submission website for more information: http://www.uta.edu/ra/GCS/DeadlinesLimitedSubmissionsTemp.htm

Assistant Professor Esther Betran invited speaker at UNTHSC, Departement of Molecular Biology and Immunology Seminar
Monday Nov. 28, 2005, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
“Sex Chromosomes and Male Functions: Where do new genes go?”

Advanced Research Program (ARP) 2006
Announcement of PI’s chosen from the internal competition to go forward will be made online at this website on 11/30/2005. If you have any questions please email Rajat Mittal at rmittal@uta.edu or call on (817) 793-4525

October 2005

Assistant Professor Cedric Feschotte invited speaker at the I International Conference/Workshop Genomic Impact of Eukaryotic Tranposable Elements
March 31-April 4, 2006 The Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, CA, USA

Genomic research moves to Life Sciences basement - the Shorthorn

September 2005

Assistant Professor Pawel Michalak one of the contributors to the book: Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies.

Assistant Professor Esther Betran invited speaker at Duquesne University.

New ABI Capillary Sequencer will be up and running soon.

August 2005

PhD Student Diana Huestis awarded with the EPA GRO Fellowship

Four New Faculty Positions in Genomics/Bioinformatics, Microbiology, & Cell Biology.

July 2005

Dr Ellen Pritham and Assistant Professor Cedric Feschotte's paper on Entamoeba transposons was evaluated as "must read" and "exceptional" by two members of Faculty of 1000. With a F1000 factor of 8.0, the paper spent the entire month in top 10 of all Biology papers!

Advanced Research Program (ARP) for the 2006-07 biennium.

The Program Announcement for the ARP competition.

March 2005

New Faculty Joining the Genome Biology Group.
Dr. Elena de la Casa-Esperon will join our faculty next fall semestre. Dr. de la Casa's research focuses on different aspects of non Mendelian genetics and epigenetics in mouse.
She has been an Assistant Scientist at Temple University School of Medicine.

February 2005

New Faculty Joining the Genome Biology Group.

Dr. Jaroslaw Krzywinski will join our faculty next fall semester. Dr. Krzywinski's research focuses on evolutionary genomics and molecular phylogenetics of anopheline mosquitoes.
He has been a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame.


Dr. Andre Pires da Silva will join our faculty next fall semestre. Dr. Pires da Silva's research focuses on the evolution of sex determination in nematodes.
He has been a postdoctoral researcher at Max-Planck-Institut at Tuebingen (Germany).


January 2005
Genome Biology Group is awarded with $500,000 for UTA Genome Center (Dr. Paul Chippindale PI)

December 2004

Biology Assistant Professor Dr. Esther Betran participates in the analysis of the Chicken Genome published in Nature.