News

We were pleased to see Gloria Culver, Ph.D., a secondary faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, mentioned in the Rochester Review Magazine in an article titled Going After Harmful Bacteria:

One challenge in killing off harmful bacteria is that many of them develop resistance to antibiotics. Now researchers are targeting the formation of the protein-making machinery, or ribosomes, in those cells as a possible way to stop the bacteria. Gloria Culver, Professor of Biology, has, for the first time, isolated the middle steps in the process that creates the ribosomes.

Published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Culver’s work—conducted with graduate student Neha Gupta—captures a piece of ribosomal RNA in one of the intermediate states of being pared down to fit with protein molecules.

Xin Li, Ph.D.

The Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics welcomes the arrival of Xin Li, Ph.D., who is a new Assistant Professor. Dr. Li studies the roles of PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in the development of germ cells and to causes of infertility in humans and animals.

Dr. Li was previously a postdoctoral fellow with Philip Zamore at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Please feel free to visit his personal and lab websites and view his CV.

Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, has received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health to continue her research in RNA biology.

Maquat is an internationally recognized expert in the field of RNA biology, in which she works to discover new cellular pathways and clues to the molecular basis of human disease. She is the Founding Director of the University’s Center for RNA Biology and in 2011 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She is one of three faculty members from SMD who have been appointed to the Academy and the only woman.

The MERIT award (the acronym stands for Method for Extending Research In Time) was established by NIH in 1986 to provide stable, long-term grant support to help top scientists pursue ambitious projects that require more time to develop -- with the idea that higher-risk research can lead to higher-impact findings. The award also lifts the burden of applying for new grants to fund their research. MERIT recipients receive five years of funding and are afforded a simplified renewal for a second five-year period, cutting out the complex reapplication process, as long as they meet certain criteria showing that their research has yielded results.

Scientists cannot apply for the award; they are nominated by the funding NIH institute. Less than five percent of NIH-funded investigators are selected.

Professor Harold Smith's company OyaGen was recently featured in a 2-page article in the February issue of A&U Magazine, a publication devoted to art, activism, and current events related to the HIV-affected community. The article discussed exciting new potential treatments being developed at OyaGen and can be read online here.