Volume 8 Issues 1 &2 Fall /Spring 2017-2018 Biology@Memphis 2 From the Communications Committee: A 8 Undergraduate Student News: Check out the brief overview of the Department News and A research performed by our undergraduates announcing our new blog! 9 Staff News: A long-time staff member is 2 Faculty News: New Faculty, Grants, Awards, recognized for 25 years of service. Presentations, and Publications. 9 Biologists@Large: The things we do outside 5 Graduate Student News: A quick look at our the friendly confines of Ellington Hall and the recently completed Ph.D.s and Masters Life Sciences Building students, an impressive number of grants, scholarships and awards, and a sample of 10 Selected Publications: A sampling of the graduate student presentations nationally and books and journal articles published by our internationally! faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students. 7 BioGSA: Workshops, invited speakers, field 12 Issue Credits and contact information: URLs and email addresses to let us know what you’re trips, new officers… and more! doing! From the Communications Committee Volume 8 Issue 1&2 The University of Memphis, a Tennessee Board of Regents institution, is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Spring2018 Action University. It is committed to education of a non-racially identifiable student body. 1 What a busy year! So busy that we never managed to research focuses on cross-domain microbial ecology get out a fall edition of the newsletter! Dr. Shawn which includes the integration of all microbes (fungal, Brown joined our department in August, Dr. David Freeman assumed the Chair when Dr. Randall Bayer stepped down in October, and we’ve had another successful faculty search, as Dr. Emily Puckett will be joining us in August. We have faculty garnering new grant funding, publishing papers, winning awards for teaching and research, and presenting their work nationally and internationally. Our graduate students are travelling, presenting, publishing, and moving on to the next challenges of their careers. And let’s not forget our award-winning undergraduates! We also recognize new staff members and those who have been with us for a number of years. Finally, this is the last Department Newsletter to be presented in this format. Starting in August, we will be doing “This Pictured (left) Dr. Shawn Brown in the field in Lapland, Sweden. Algal bloom in the Month in Biological Sciences”, a blog for more rapid snow (right) in Glacier Peaks Wilderness Area, Washington State. and timely delivery of all the special things happening bacterial, archaeal, algal, and other micro-organisms) in the Department. Watch the Department web page into ecological studies. (www.memphis.edu/biology) for the blog’s URL. Microbes are incredibly important drivers of ecosystem processes and play very influential roles in driving macroecological patterns and interactions. Dr. Brown examines cross-domain microbial ecology at the forefront of receding glaciers, where virgin substrates with few organic legacies are exposed and available for primary colonization of plants, animals, and microbes! Recent work suggests that the rules and patterns controlling microbial assembly differ from established macro-ecological expectations. Dr. Brown’s lab investigates the controls of microbial assembly and function in these primary successional forefronts. He is also asking how snow algae, which form large and visually stunning algal blooms in late season snow packs, survive, persist, and establish new colonies as well as the nature of algae-microbial interactions and community functionality. Finally, Dr. Brown is investigating the endophytes (organisms living between plant cells) of the Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) to dissect the underlying controls (environmental) and mechanisms (gene and pathways of Populus) that facilitate endophyte establishment and impact of their presence Populus growth and inection by pathogens. Dr. Brown's Faculty News research combines traditional ecological measures with Next-Generation sequencing (NGS) and The Department Welcomes Dr. Shawn Brown Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to elucidate host-microbe and microbe-microbe Dr. Shawn Brown joined the Department in Fall of interactions. 2017, after finishing a post-doctoral fellowship at To read more about Dr. Brown's work, visit his lab Oregon State University. Dr. Brown received his B.S. webpage and see the next page for links to some of in Biology from the University of Oregon and his Ph.D. his recent papers. in Biology at Kansas State University. Dr. Brown's • Veach, A.M., Stegen, J., Brown, S.P., Dodds, W.K., and A. Jumpponen (2016) Spatial and successional 2 dynamics of microbial biofilm communities in a Dr. Jaime Sabel received a Faculty Research Grant grassland stream ecosystem. Molecular Ecology 25: from the University of Memphis for her project entitled 4674-4688. “A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of Plant Blindness and • Brown, S.P., Ungerer, M.C. and A. Jumpponen. (2016) Botanical Literacy.” A community of clones: snow algae are diverse communities of spatially structured clones. International Journal of Plant Sciences 177: 432-439. Awards • Brown, S.P., A. Ferrer, J. Dalling, and K.D. Heath. (2016) Don't put all your eggs in one basket: a cost- Dr. Judy Cole received the 2017 Dean's Award for effective and powerful method to optimize primer choice Teaching Excellence. for rRNA environmental community analyses using the Fluidigm Access Array. Molecular Ecology Resources Dr. Bernie Daigle was selected by the College of Arts 16: 946-956. and Sciences’s Graduate Council as a recipient of the Early Career Research Award which recognizes Grants faculty members with outstanding research programs in the early stages of their career. Dr. Bernie Daigle, Jr., received a U.S. Army Research Office grant for his work entitled “Identifying Prognostic Dr. Amy Abell was Biomarkers for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” FY18 invited to present the High School Apprenticeship Program (HSAP) and Betty Hay Award lecture Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program at the 8th International (URAP) Meeting on Epithelial- Mesenchymal Transition Dr. Duane McKenna received two grants; one from held in Houston, TX the National Science Foundation for "RUI: Jewels of December 2017. She the visual world: The phylogeny of Buprestidae was awarded the Betty (Coleoptera) and evolution of color and color visual Hay Award for an systems" and one from the the USDA for "A independent female biosystematic identification and threat assessment tool scientist within seven for wood-boring longhorned beetles (family years of establishing her Cerambycidae)". independent lab. The award included a Dr. Abell (right) receives the Betty meeting registration Hay Award from Dr. Jing Yang waiver and a monetary (left). Picture courtesy of AN Abell. award. Invited talks and Research Travel Duane McKenna traveled to Panama (July 2017) to give talks at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and to meet with colleagues and collaborators. He also traveled to Germany (September 2017) to give an invited talk at the Biennial Insect Phylogeny Meeting in Dresden. Dr. Bernie Daigle, Jr. presented MLE to ABC: Parameter Estimation for Stochastic Biochemical Systems.” to the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, Sep 13, 2017. He also presented “Characterizing Biochemical Rare Events Using Stochastic Simulation.” in BINF 7980: Research Seminar in Bioinformatics, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, Nov 17, 2017. 3 Dr. Jaime Sabel presented “Classroom interventions to improve biology students’ understanding of scientific concepts and practices.” to the Innovations Showcase at the University of Memphis April 24th. Dr. Shawn Brown travelled to Ole Miss on April 27th to present “The cold never bothered me anyways: microbial ecology, cross-domain interactions, and dispersal of snow-borne microbes. He followed this up with a trip to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park to present “ Short-term impacts of wildfire on soil and litter microbes display high context-dependency” to National Park Service personnel. Presentations Sabel, J. (2017, July). Use of scaffolds to support self- regulated learning and metacognition in undergraduate biology students. Short talk presented at the 2017 National Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research Murin PJ, C Beza-Beza, E Scully, DD McKenna, J (SABER), Minneapolis, MN. Duan. PCR validation of glycoside hydrolase families 43 and 44 coding for putative plant cell wall degrading Sabel, J. (2017, November). Use of Scaffolds to enzymes in the emerald ash borer (Agrilus plani- Support Self-Regulated Learning and Metacognition in pennis) genome. The 65th Annual Meeting of the Undergraduate Biology Students. Poster presented at Entomological Society of America. Denver, Colorado, the 2017 Professional Development Conference for USA. November 5–8. the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), Atlanta, GA. S Shin, A Wijeratne, S Haddad, H Nadel, AM Ray, DD McKenna. Phylogenomics of longhorned beetles (Cerambycidae): Does expanded taxon sampling improve phylogenetic resolution? The 65th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America. Denver, Colorado, USA. November 5–8. A Johnson, B Jordal, J Hulcr, DD McKenna. Resolving the chaos of Cryphalini taxonomy. The 65th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America. Denver, Colorado, USA. November 5–8. DD McKenna, S Shin and D Clarke. New insights into the evolution and genomic