Department of Biology

♦ Newly graduated Masters Student Bridie Alexander-Lawrie also has her first paper published - "Inhertance through the cytoplasm" in Heredity. Read Bridie's paper here!

♦ The Biology Department is excited to announce that New Mexico Tech will be the first college in New Mexico to join over 200 other colleges in over 40 states as part of the SEA-PHAGES program which is part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Alliance (HHMI-SEA).  The first group of students will be freshman from the Biology and Biomedical Sciences programs. During this year-long course, students will hunt down, capture, and characterize viruses that infect bacteria (called “bacteriophages”) from the  environment.  Each student has the opportunity to name their novel phage, and contribute a sample to the national data bank at the University of Pittsburgh. The class as a whole will select one phage that will have its DNA sequenced, and in the second semester, this sequence will be fully analyzed and annotated by the class. Phages discovered by undergraduate students through this program have been used to treat patients suffering from multi-drug resistant bacterial infections (see this link). While only a few students are able to participate in this pilot course, the Biology Department plans to expand enrollment next year as part of our mission to increase opportunities for students to participate in authentic research experiences.

https://nmt.edu/news/2023/goldwater-scholar.php

♦ Cassandra Skaar earns prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.

♦ BMS graduate Wayne Vigil, Jr, now at UC-Riverside has published his first paper "Spectral deconvolution of redox species in the crotonyl-CoA-dependent NADH:ferredoxin oxidoreductase from Megasphaera elsdenii. A flavin-dependent bifurcating enzyme" in the Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Review Wayne's pager here

♦ El Defensor Chieftain article on the new licensing agreement withParnell Pharmaceuticals to develop an anti-viral nasal spray to prevent COVID-19 that comes out of biology department research.