NEWS & EVENTS 2006

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.