WFU Biology

Diversity impacts who, what we teach

Jeff Muday — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:40:07 +0000

Diversity impacts who, what we teach

Professor of Biology Herman Eure (left) and Randolph Childress, assistant men’s basketball coach

Professor Herman Eure (Ph.D ’74) reflects on advances over last 39 years.

By HERMAN EURE (PH.D ’74) Wake Forest Magazine Guest Contributor

Our diverse faculty and student body have impacted who we teach, how we teach, where we teach, what we teach, and what we study. All one has to do is to look at the research that faculty are involved in to see the impact. For example, Mary Deshazer’s work on diseases that affect women in the 21st century, especially breast and ovarian cancer; Rian Bowie’s work with African-American Women and the Social Movement, Claudia Kairoff ’s work with 18th Century Women Writers, Ulrike Wiethaus’s work on Native American Populations, Beth Hopkins’s (’73, P ’12) work on women of the Civil Rights Era, Tony Parent’s (P ’09) work on Slavery, Judith Madera’s work on Creole and Caribbean Culture, and Dany Kim-Shapiro’s work on sickle cell anemia, a disease that affect blacks, are but a few of the areas of scholarship that have resulted from a more diverse faculty.

Click here to read the full story at Wake Forest Magazine

BioBook to bring new generation of e-learning

Jeff Muday — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:33:08 +0000

BioBook to bring new generation of e-learning

Daniel Johnson, creator of Biobook

Wake Forest and Forsyth Tech work to bring novel e-learning tool to Biology 101

By WILL FERGUSON Office of Communications and External Relations

BioBook is an electronic learning tool that offers content in an unconventional way. Unlike the thick and convoluted textbook of old, BioBook is accessible by smart-phone, tablet or computer. Developed by Wake Forest researchers, it breaks down complex and lengthy topics into small, manageable chunks of knowledge that can be changed and updated as educators see fit. It also provides students instant access to multimedia from national research organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in addition to traditional text, class lectures and practice quizzes.

Click here to read the full story at the WFU News Service

Twins combine interest in science, art

Jeff Muday — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:14:04 +0000

Twins combine interest in science, art
By KASHA PATEL (’12), INTERN Office of Communications and External Relations

The Blackburn twins are playing an integral role in the ongoing development of BioBook, an interactive biology e-textbook designed to improve persistence and success in college-level science courses created by an interdisciplinary research team at Wake Forest. However, the e-book is teaching the sophomore biology majors much more than science, it has also enhanced their writing and drawing skills.

Click here to read the article at the WFU News Service

Twins – Jessica and Tiffany Blackburn are Biology majors and assist with development of BioBook project

“Bee” impressed

Jeff Muday — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:44:26 +0000

Bee impressed at ACC Meeting of the Minds
Wake Forest to showcase innovative student research from across the ACC –

Prof. Susan Fahrbach in lab with David Hale

By WILL FERGUSON Office of Communications and External Relations

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but this might not be the case for a honeybee. Just ask David Hale (’15), a sophomore biology major. Hale has been studying the relationship between brain structure and cognitive function in honeybees since the summer after his freshman year.

Click here to read full text of article at WFU NEWS

Update: Grimberg 2012 TEDx lecture

Jeff Muday — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:48:40 +0000

From TED “Ideas Worth Spreading – riveting talks by remarkable people” [link]

Our own PhD. Biology graduate Brian Grimberg, now Assistant Professor of International Health at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, gave one of the 2012 TEDxCLE talks entitled “Buzzkill: How Malaria Has, and Is, Changing The World We Live In”. Dr. Grimberg’s work is focused on the cell biology of malarial parasites. Brian’s lab focuses on screening traditionally used native treatments to develop new drugs, and to develop new antimalarial vaccines and rapid diagnostics.

Click here to see his video: http://www.tedxcle.com/dr-brian-grimberg/

Dr. Grimberg did his graduate studies in Biology with Professor Clifford Zeyl. Brian received his doctoral degree in 2004.

Related Links:

Dr. Grimberg WFU 2004, photo credit TEDxCLE

Google search for drug discovery

Jeff Muday — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:50:35 +0000

A Google search for drug discovery
Grants totaling $860,000 fund cutting-edge genetic sequencing

By ALICIA ROBERTS

Jason Gagliano, a biology graduate student, works in a Wake Forest lab.
It’s what scholars dream about: getting to work with the latest technology and leading researchers in the industry to develop a scientific breakthrough.

For Jason Gagliano, a biology graduate student, it’s a reality.

Gagliano is part of the physics department team developing a technology called Next-Gen Lab-on-Bead. The tool uses next-generation genetic sequencing to make the drug development process thousands of times faster, much like a Google search.

Click here to read this article at the WFU News Service

Jason Gagliano, a biology graduate student, works in a Wake Forest lab.

Teaching with tomatoes

Department of Biology — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:15:40 +0000

Peter Chawaga of the Wake Forest News Service recently published an article about the outreach efforts of Drs. Gloria Muday and Carole Browne. These professors along with the support of graduate and undergraduate students execute an outreach program to the public schools. The focus of this program is to teach genetics using heirloom tomatoes as the model organism.

This program, funded by the American Society of Plant Biology Education Foundation, helps the local students learn important genetic concepts from instructors to whom they can easily relate. It also helps cement the concepts for the Wake Forest students and gives them a newfound respect for the work their professors do every day.

Click here to read the entire text at the Wake Forest News Service.

Dr. Gloria Muday teaching genetics to high school students

Honey bee see . . . honey bee do?

Jeff Muday — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:06:59 +0000

PLOS (The Public Library of Science) is a non-profit publisher and advocacy organization recently published an article focusing on the work of Reynolds Professor of Developmental Neuroscience Susan Fahrbach and graduate student researcher Scott Dobrin (PhD. 2011). Fahrbach and her lab group have discovered that it is possible to train honey bees by SHOWING them. Susan and Scott Dobrin (PhD. 2011) engineered an apparatus to make bee learning a possibility.

The article’s author Rachel Bernstein writes:

Training a dog is hard enough, so just imagine some of the tricks you would have to use to train a honey bee. Despite the difficulties, Scott Dobrin and Susan Fahrbach at Wake Forest University in North Carolina successfully trained honeybees to respond to colored lights for a tasty sucrose treat…

Click here to visit PLOS for the full text article

Bee learning “harness” designed by Scott Dobrin (PhD. WFU 2011)

Nick Hristov featured by NPR

Department of Biology — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:30:57 +0000

Nickolay Hristov, Professor with the UNC Center for Design Innovation and Wake Forest Biology Research Professor, does amazing research on bats. His work was featured on National Public Radio (NPR) weekly program Science Friday. Nick received his PhD. from Wake Forest in 2008 and works closely with Professor William Conner’s laboratory. In this Science Friday segment Nick describes the technology behind his research.

Nickolay Hristov (PhD. 2008) uses technology to study the fascinating world of bats.

Click here to read more (http://sciencefriday.com/video/09/07/2012/to-the-bat-cave.html)

Related:

Nick’s work on bats has received media attention from the BBC, The Scientist, and Wired.com

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/infrared-video-500000-bats-emerge-from-cave/

Bats Set Up Homes on the Highway. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8291195.stm)

Are Bat Bridges Safer than Bat Caves? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8291483.stm)

Fruit Fly research might change diabetes treatment

Jeff Muday — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:05:39 +0000

Dr. Eric Johnson’s research on Drosophila provides insight into human diabetes treatment. His laboratory’s findings were recently featured by the WFU News Service and the scientific journal Genetics.

Complexity doesn’t stem from having different genes or special nerve cells. The basic biophysical, biochemical makeup is the same. The difference in complexity is in the number of cells. Why flies are so simple is that they have approximately 100,000 neurons versus the approximately 11 billion in humans.

Johnson’s latest study appears in the October issue of the Genetics, which is available online now. In it, he and his research team use the fruit fly, Drosophila, to look at an enzyme called AMP-activated kinase and its role in signaling the hormone that elevates the level of sugar in the blood.

Click here to read the WFU News Service post by Alicia Roberts

Eric Johnson studies Drosophila in the lab