Kurt Weiss joined the Department of Biochemistry in March as the new manager of the Biochemistry Optical Core (BOC). The research core is housed in the biochemistry department but is a resource for all campus researchers who are interested in using microscopy techniques in their work.
Weiss joins the BOC from the Morgridge Institute for Research, where he was an assistant scientist and former postdoctoral researcher. At Morgridge, he performed multi-scale imaging using light sheet microscopy in conjunction with tissue clearing, expansion microscopy, and live imaging with Jan Huisken...
Biochemistry assistant professor and Morgridge Institute for Research investigator Jason Cantor was recently granted a prestigious award from the American Cancer Society to continue his investigation into conditionally essential genes in human cancer cells. Utilizing CRISPR, a revolutionary DNA-editing technology, Cantor and his team will make large-scale screens to possibly identify what genes are essential for the survival and growth of human cells.
“Many thanks to the American Cancer Society for supporting our work that will investigate conditionally essential genes in human...
The University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Biochemistry will host the grand opening of its Cryo-Electron Microscopy Research Center (CEMRC) and Midwest Center for Cryo-Electron Tomography (MCCET) at 8:30 a.m. on June 7. The grand opening is part of the department’s 42nd Steenbock Symposium held June 7-8, 2022.
The UW-Madison Department of Chemistry presented the 2022 James W. Taylor Teaching Award to Liana Lamont, a former biochemistry graduate student who received her Ph.D. in 2006. Lamont was a member of the Kimble Lab.
Lamont shared her instructional expertise and philosophy last month in a talk titled, “General Chemistry Curriculum Redesign – Successes and Challenges.” During her presentation, Lamont shared what she’s learned in her career, including how to use impostor syndrome as a motivator, without falling into self doubt.
“This award feels validating and I appreciate it...
Researchers are uncovering the complex mechanisms by which human gut bacteria accomplish a variety of functions, from transforming compounds derived from food into nutrition for the host to producing molecules that impact human behavior and performance.
The Venturelli Lab has now overturned prior knowledge about how polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) mediate the fitness and community-level interactions of Bacteroides uniformis, one of the most abundant species of bacteria in the human gut. The researchers detail their groundbreaking methods and results in the February 2022 issue...
The Department of Biochemistry is pleased to announce Jae Yang as the winner of the 2022 Boyer Award for Postdoctoral Excellence in Biochemistry. The award recognizes and rewards excellence in research accomplishments in the Department of Biochemistry.
Congratulations to biochemistry major Victoria Zurakowski, who won second place in the 2021-2022 Student Employees of the Year competition! Nearly 9,000 students work in thousands of roles across UW-Madison, and each of these students creates an impact that's felt throughout campus. The Student Employee of the Year recognition acknowledges the invaluable work of some of these students. Zurakowski is a program assistant at the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, which aims to improve research mentoring relationships at all career stages by developing,...
Neural networks and machine learning once seemed like far-fetched futuristic concepts but are now proven successful tools that can help scientists approach big problems (and big datasets). A major advantage for machine learning is that it can analyze high throughput datasets and pull out the best predictions out of millions of sequence combinations — a needle in a haystack process that would be impossible to do experimentally in the lab.
Professor Aaron Hoskins is a new member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Meetings Committee. Other new committee members include professor Kim Orth of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Martha Cyert, a professor and department chair at Stanford, and Jared Rutter, a professor at the University of Utah and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
At the conclusion of each year, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) takes a moment to look back and reflect on the accomplishments of the college's community. Among this year's standouts, a story by Sarah Lynn Traver Saunders about a $40 million award from the NSF to establish a network for advanced NMR across three institutions! Congrats again to professors Katherine Henzler-Wildman and Chad Rienstra on this achievement. Henzler-Wildman and Rienstra are leading the installation of the first of two new nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers planned for the Network for...
Professor John Ralph is among seventeen researchers from UW–Madison recognized on the Institute for Scientific InformationTM list of Highly Cited Researchers 2021.
Nearly seventy years after the discovery of Amphotericin B, scientists are still learning from this enigmatic drug. New results challenge a long-standing paradigm for the drug's mechanism of action and suggest new avenues for drug development.
The Wisconsin Energy Institute spoke with Leta Landucci, an undergraduate researcher in John Ralph's lab. Leta is from Middleton, Wisconsin, and is a senior studying biochemistry.
What did your path to UW–Madison look like?
I have always lived close to Madison, so UW–Madison was a natural choice for me. It is close to home and has a phenomenally diverse range of research opportunities, which appealed to me.
Do you have other academic interests besides your major?
Aside from biochemistry, I also enjoy learning about the history of science, specifically...
UW–Madison biochemists are studying the structures and functions of proteins and RNA synthesis complexes from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Their research, which synthesizes expertise and results from several disciplines and state-of-the-art technologies, demonstrates just how much of the “life cycle” of SARS-CoV-2 remains to be discovered—every research study, every experiment, informs another, and lives hang in the balance.
When we were growing up, many of us wondered what it would be like to encounter our teachers “in the wild” – outside the confines of school, what did they wear? What did they like to eat? Were they cool? Who were their friends? What would they be doing if they weren’t a teacher?
Department of Biochemistry administrative staff have embraced this inquisitiveness, asking biochemistry faculty about everything from their worst subject in school to how they got into science and what advice they’d give a new assistant professor.
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