Understanding the Molecular Targets of Antimicrobial Chemokines

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Brittany Kartchner and Dr. Eric Wilson, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology For this project, I hypothesized that the amino acid composition of the C terminus of chemokine proteins allows some chemokines to bind to different sites on the bacterial cell wall and that the chemokines with a strong positive charge (CCL25 and CCL28) will […]

Accumulation of Attached Chemokines on Gram-negative Bacterial Membranes

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Peter Janzen and Dr. Eric Wilson, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology The purpose of this project was to see if a genetic alteration to gram-negative bacteria would affect the phenotypic ability to resist the attachment of chemokines. In other words, we were trying to see if we could change the structure of a bacterium […]

Identifying Proteins that Interact with Human PAS kinase

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Tacie Hall and Dr. Julianne Grose, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology When PAS kinase is knocked out in mice placed on high-fat diets, these mice show such symptoms as decreased weight gain, hypermetabolic phenotype, decreased liver triglyceride accumulation, and retained insulin sensitivity when compared with their wild type littermates.1 These symptoms are highly associated […]

Determining the Role of Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus LANA Protein in the Development of Persistent Infection

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Jamie Gardiner and Dr. Brad Berges, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) is a human cancer virus that causes Kaposis’ sarcoma, the most common cancer found in AIDS patients. Our lab is working to develop humanized mice as a novel animal model to study KSHV infection and related diseases, since there […]

CASTing for a Putative DNA Binding Sequence for nBmp2

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Brian Earley and Dr. Laura Bridgewater, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Bmp2 is a secretory mammalian protein that plays important roles in bone development and adult pathology. Recently, a nuclear variant (nBmp2) was discovered with an unknown function for this typically secretory protein in the nucleus (Felin et al., 2010). The purpose of this […]

Ex Vivo Infection and Re‐isolation of Human Herpesvirus 6

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Stephanie Carlson and Dr. Bradford Berges, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Science rarely cooperates as anticipated, but that can often lead to unexpected insight and solution. I ran into that this semester with a certain aspect of our project. We are continuing to collect data for the American Society for Virology in late July […]

Genomic and Proteomic Analysis of an Erwinia amylovora Phage

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Alicia Brighton and Dr. Julianne Grose, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Introduction Fireblight is a disease, caused by the bacteria Erwinia amylovora, that can infect some fruit trees, including apple and pear trees. When an infection occurs, the effects can be devastating—any infected part of the tree must be removed and destroyed, sometimes resulting […]