Department of Biology

♦ 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.

♦ 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 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abb.2021.108793

♦ Congratulations to graduate students Marina Hein and Katie McLain for seeking out funding opportunities and being awarded a grant from the Native Plant Society ofNew Mexico to further their research. 

♦ We are proud to announce that new Biology Accelerated MS student Catherine Batchelder is the recipient of a Macey Scholarship for 2020-2021!

♦ Biology Acellerated MS student Kasandra Velarde applied for and received her own grant under PI Dr. Linda DeVeaux to fund her own project. This is the article the NM Water Resources Research Institute wrote about it.

♦ 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.