Biochemistry

Five St. Thomas student groups have been accepted into the Clinton Global Initiative University, including a pair of graduate students looking to cut food waste on campus.

This week's notes feature faculty Corinne Carvalho, Massimo Faggioli, Anne Klejment, Mark McInroy, Manjeet Rege, Angela Senander, Gary Voegele and Christian Washburn; and School of Social Work students Shanea Turner Smith and Elisabeth Wells, and a host of award-winning students from the 2014 Chemistry and Biochemistry Banquet.

This month, St. Thomas senior Elizabeth Chambers, junior Hunter Gaitan, sophomore Ryan Burke and biochemistry professor Dr. Adam Kay will help plant 96 plots of wildflowers on a vacant gravel pit in downtown St. Paul for their research study, The Helpful Flowers Project. The team will study biodiversity and how wildflowers remove toxic heavy metals from soil.

This week's notes feature faculty Anne Klejment, Dalma Martinovic-Weigelt, Lisa Prevette, Manjeet Rege, Christian Washburn, John Wendt and Reid Zimmerman; staff Carol Peterfeso and James Rogers; and students Katie Boyd, Emily Cabel, Jackie Heitzman, Caitlin Kielblock, Lauren McGovern, Kirsten Muller, Megan Tappe and undergraduate students from the Geography Department.

Ryan Augustin, a junior majoring in biochemistry, was awarded a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, an award that honors outstanding students who plan to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. Juniors Elizabeth Annoni and Mark Painter were named honorable mentions.

On our cover we feature a special section on education and professional development The contributors to this section provide advice for those trying to get over the Ph.D hump and for those picking a graduate school program or postdoctoral position The section also features lessons that can be learned from the mistakes of senior scientists and tips on getting the most out of myIDP In our features section we offer two Q&As one with Raymond Cypess CEO of the American Type Tissue Col...

July 23 2015 —  The National Science Foundation has awarded the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology a grant of half a million dollars to support a comprehensive mentoring program for postdoctoral fellows and early-career faculty members The program focuses on grantsmanship skills and career-development strategies It also promotes diversity in the scientific workforce by supporting underrepresented minority postdoctoral scientists and new assistant professors i...

June 2015 — On our cover we feature a story about a rare brain tumor that always has seemed unstoppable But a recent discovery might mean there is reason for hope Our Defying Stereotypes series comes to a close with a profile of Joe Wong a scientist and comedian This issue also contains new contributions to our Generations and Hobbies series including a poem that Najla Arshad started a decade ago In the President's Message Steve McKnight laments that the National Institutes of Health ...

A Minireview series coordinated by Associate Editor F Peter Guengerich July 14 2015 — Four Minireviews deal with aspects of the α-ketoglutarate/iron dependent dioxygenases in this eighth Thematic Series on Metals in Biology The Minireviews cover a general introduction and synopsis of the current understanding of mechanisms of catalysis the roles of these dioxygenases in post-translational protein modification and de-modification the roles of the ten-eleven translocation (Te...

A Minireview series coordinated by Associate Editor Henrik G Dohlman July 14 2015 — Over the past half century The Journal of Biological Chemistry has been the venue for many landmark publications on the topic of G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs also known as 7 transmembrane receptors) The GPCR superfamily in humans is comprised of about 800 members and is the target of about one third of all pharmaceuticals Most of these drugs target a very small subset of GPCRs and do s...