In the 1970's, John F. Kennedy declared "war on cancer", and the search for a "magic bullet" began.  As we've learned more about how cells sense their environment and decide to grow (or commit "cellular suicide"), we've also learned that cancer is not a single disease, so there isn't a single cure.  For a cell to become cancerous, there must be at least mutations in two different types of proteins--one to trigger inappropriate cell growth, as well as the loss of a growth repressor.  These mutations usually occur in proteins involved in one of three main processes in the cell:  signal transduction, which is the way the cell senses environmental cues to grow; the cell cycle, which is the process by which a cell divides into two daughter cells; and apoptosis, or programmed cell death of cells with problems in their DNA replication or other stages of cell division.

The ten members of the class each focused on a single protein involved in cancer.  They developed a Proteopedia page, highlighting both the structure and function of their proteins.  They presented their results yesterday at lunch.

Their findings are also available to the wider scientific audience through the pages they authored on Proteopedia.  If you'd like to learn more about their projects, visit the class Proteopedia page.

That's true this week.  And if you've been doing it, you heard some amazing speakers!

Last Friday, Michael Hopkins from the University of Chicago talked about building artificial photosynthesis systems from inorganic materials.

On Monday, Jacob Hale from Purdue University spoke on "Molecular Motion: Interpreting the Dance."  His talk highlighted molecular motion of single proteins in a membrane using both experimental data and modeling techniques to refine our understanding of how membranes "work."

Today, Martin Gruebele from the University of Illinois gave a talk entitled "How molecules resemble spacecraft, and how proteins fold in cells."  The leap from transition states of simple molecules to protein folding may seem like a huge one, but Dr. Gruebele's analogy of using the gravitational force of planets to minimize the energy needed to take a longer but more efficient route made it all fit together.

And on Thursday, Jeffery Elmendorf from the Indiana University School of Medicine will be talking about "Membrane cholesterol and the Road to Diabetes Type 2."  I don't know what's on the lunch menu, but there may be some irony if we're eating pizza and drinking soda during this one!

We are privileged to be able to host such a list of quality speakers.  It brings depth and relevance to what we teach in class, and helps all of us keep up with cutting edge research.

What's amazing is that these are just the science talks that happened this week.  It doesn't include the African Art Exhibit and associated talks, the Multicultural Festival events, an Ancient Greek sculpture and culture, or Moot Court Finals. 

So Wednesday is the only day you're on your own for lunch.  Use it wisely!

Tuesday the Chemistry of Cancer class donned disposable white lab coats and safety glasses in their visit to Endocyte,  a start-up chemotherapy targeting company in West Lafayette, IN.  The visit was the culmination of seven weeks of learning about DNA mutation, signal transduction, cell cycle, and apoptosis…and where these processes go wrong in cancer cells.  This involved integrating topics from biochemistry, cell biology, organic chemistry, and physiology.

Matt Routh ’09 commented, “yeah, I ran some on our 400 MHz this morning.”  Our host was surprised to find out that not only did Wabash have a NMR spectrometer, but also the students regularly get to use it themselves, AND we have a higher powered instrument than they do!

Meanwhile, Nathan Line '10 appreciated the automatic chromatography system.  He’s continuing a research project he started during his summer internship at The Ohio State University, and appreciated its time saving aspects...but understood the budgetary trade-offs.   

The tour went an hour longer than we planned.  We made it back for afternoon classes and labs just in time…but it was worth every minute.   

This trip was made possible by the Know Indiana Grant from the Lilly Foundation.

Many students chose to use water as a heat sink--this group went to the extreme and lined their house with a black plastic bag filled with water as a heat sink.  

Other variables included the color of the box interior, use of reflective material on the inside of the lid, window size and window composition.  One group omitted the window completely; while their gain to loss ratio was the highest, the absolute gain in temperature was the lowest.  The most creative insulation was a fur hat!

On Monday afternoon, I again presented my poster, this time during the general session on phosphatases. While this competition was not judged, I had many more people come question and speak with me about my work. What amazed me about both presentations was my ability to speak to graduate-level researchers. I felt like I had really accomplished something in developing my ideas, understanding my work, and talking with others in this field about similar experiences. I thought back to many of my Wabash chemistry classmates and knew that they too could carry on highly detailed and skilled conversations with many of these experts in their various fields.

Outside of my presentations, I had three major highlights to this trip. The first was meeting Dr. Tony Hunter, who discovered tyrosine kinases, at a reception following his keynote address on Sunday. This was a major breakthrough in the 1980s and eventually led to the creation of cancer drugs that can inhibit these pathways and has saved thousands of lives. Also during this reception, I was able to meet Donald and Judith Voet, authors of our biochemistry textbook, Fundamentals of Biochemistry. We later went out to dinner with these two well-known authors in the biochemistry world and it was great to be able to say that I had the opportunity to meet them and have conversations with such great people!

The second highlight of my trip was interacting with a number of other undergraduates who were presenting their work from across the U.S. We not only were able to attend presentations and sessions together, but at night we went out to explore the city. Having spent a month this past summer living in DC, I served as the tour guide for the Mall, Washington Monument, Lincoln, Korean, and Vietnam memorials, as well as the White House. On our last night out, we went to the Young Experimental Scientists (YES) Reception and had a great time. It was amazing to see all of the work that they had done and to recognize how many amazing undergraduates are doing such complicated and difficult research. It also made me appreciate the opportunities that I have had and I plan on keeping in contact with a number of these people into my career.

The final highlight was speaking with several expert diabetes researchers about their work in the field and getting to gain a better understanding for current research trends. As I will be starting my career with Eli Lilly and Company in Diabetes Sales in just two weeks, it was a great opportunity for me to directly interact with academics who are experts in this field. I was able to gain a lot of knowledge from these men and women and know I will be able to apply it to my future work.

In conclusion, I had a wonderful time at this event and am very grateful for the funding that I received from the Undergraduate Research Committee. I hope that this type of program can fund many more Wabash men in their research over a broad range of topics, but especially those interested in attending the ASBMB Conference. Following a great experience in working with Dr. Taylor, I must thank her for her help and support, and hope that I can pass on all that I have learned from her to help the future of Wabash Chemistry.

In order to gear up for this big event, the chemistry students have been sharing their results with students and faculty, both here at Wabash and beyond. Near the beginning of this semester, the Chemistry Club co-sponsored a poster symposium in Hays Hall to spotlight the work that was accomplished during the summer research internship program on campus. Also, Wabash students that completed research off campus were invited to participate and share their experiences with students considering summer research at prestigious locations such as Cornell, the National Institutes of Health, or the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Most recently, the Chemistry Club organized a trip for students to present at the 7th Annual Indiana Local Section (ACS) Poster Symposium at Earlham College. Wabash had a great showing, with the largest number of posters presented at the symposium! Posters focused on everything from porous silicon research to virus-induced gene silencing. The students celebrated their successful presentations on the way back to Wabash by making a pit stop at BD's Mongolian Barbeque in Indianapolis. All of this hard work will pay off this spring when the group heads to Chicago to present at the ACS National Meeting!

To learn more about the process, we took a field trip to St. Louis over fall break.  We started our visit with a tour of the Missouri Botanical Gardens.   We had hoped to meet with its president, Peter Raven, to discuss the impact of GM crops on biodiversity, but the Gardens and their research units were undergoing their annual review.  We still enjoyed all the biodiversity, the amazing glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly, and the killer koi in the Japanese Garden pond.  I think Chuck Kirshner even got some people photos to use in his photography class.

 Next we visited the Danforth Plant Science Center, a not-for-profit plant research center whose mission is to improve the human condition through plant science.  We talked extensively with Dr. Nigel Taylor about the work they are doing with cassava, one of the major nutrient sources in Africa (and the source of tapioca).  They are working to improve viral resistance and the nutrition of cassava to prevent malnutrition.  It was neat to see how they can obtain samples of virus infected plants from African farmers, who basically send them a piece of paper onto which they’ve wiped a piece of the leaf tissue. It's amazing that a swipe of leaf provides enough material for them to determine the exact viral infection.

We also met with Kevin Lutke, director of the plant transformation facility, and got to see first hand how transgenic plants are made.  Howard Berg showed us their electron and confocal microscopes (see picture), and Leslie Hicks showed us their proteomics and mass spectrometry facility.  These high-power techniques are transforming how biochemistry research is done, and it was awesome to see them in action.  Finally, we talked with Terry Woodford-Thomas about her bio-pharming research on using plants to produce vaccines.  Both the quality and quantity of research being done at the Danforth Center was amazing, and all the researchers we met with were incredibly generous with their time and eager to share their experiences with us.

 Unfortunately the Cardinals were playing in New York and not St. Louis that evening, so we didn’t get to catch a game.   We did end up eating at a place I went to when I was in a summer undergraduate research program at Washington University.  I didn’t recognize Tom’s from the outside, but who could resist the Wings and Rings we used to get after IM softball games?  Then we paid a visit to the Arch—even in the dark it’s a spectacular view.

Friday was dedicated to visiting Monsanto.  Our tour of the Chesterfield facility was led by a professional tour guide, Kathy Sehnert.  Dr. Sehnert had previously worked in the laboratories at Monsanto, so she knew how the research works, and she was able to give us more of the “big picture” than an individual researcher might have.  There were professional videos at various stops on the tour, demonstrating the various testing processes that are used in developing a new crop.  What was most impressive about the facility was the scale of the research—robots were used to test thousands of compounds for insecticidal properties at a time, and the roof was completely covered with greenhouses testing various crops.

 The Regulatory and World Headquarters for Monsanto are in another location, so we hopped back in the minivan to visit Dr. Gary Bannon ’76.  Dr. Bannon is a Lead Scientist in the Protein Sciences Regulatory Division.  Unlike the Chesterfield facility, which focuses on discovering new possibilities by screening thousands of compounds a year, the regulatory division brings these products to the point that they can be grown in the field.  This includes testing them for allergenicity, which is a complicated problem—how do you decide ahead of time if something will cause an allergic reaction?  Dr. Bannon talked with us about how his research team approaches this problem.  We’re lucky that Dr. Bannon will be visiting campus this spring as the Haines Biochemistry speaker.

 We wrapped up the trip with a detour to find a gas station that would accept the Wabash gas cards and grab a burger, then it was a sleepy and fast trip home so Tony Caldwell could compete in the swim team’s meet.  It was a whirlwind visit, but it was a great experience to see plant science research in action at two very different facilities.  I hope the Chemistry Club will make a return trip there someday to appreciate more of the great science that is happening in St. Louis.

We knew we were getting close once the ratio of Waffle Houses to freeway exits increased beyond belief!  The guys were real troopers and we made it to our destination without strangling each other.  Once in Atlanta, we settled into our hotel rooms and registered for the conference.  The students were a bit overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the gathering.  The American Chemical Society is the world's largest scientific society dedicated to a single discipline, with more than 158,000 members.  More than 12,000 scientists attended this meeting, and over 8,000 presentations were slated for the meeting, including several cross-divisional topics comprised of symposia that highlight important research advances in drug discovery, energy, and nanotechnology.  I presented a poster and two talks on the latest results from our lab and a new course in forensic chemistry I taught this spring. 

 Taylor Poor, Steven Rhodes, Syud Ahmed, Trayton White, and Ben Edquist (shown left) presented posters in the student research symposium.  They all did a remarkable job!  Some of the best parts of the conference involved getting away from the busy symposia schedules to hang out with the students.  We met up with Rich and Edith Dallinger to have a Wabash dinner one night at a simply wonderful restaurant.  In the rush of seminars, poster sessions, and social events that followed, everyone was pretty drained when it was time to return home.  The trip back was tiring and long; however, I think we all had a great time.

 The student's view of the trip -

       “Going from talk to talk was also a great experience.  The sheer number and variety of presentations was just incredible and it was truly exciting to be able to follow talks given by leading-edge researchers.  This trip was a great confidence booster in the sense that I really know now that I can listen to, evaluate, and discuss advanced scientific issues at the graduate and professional level.  Sometimes it seems like we live in a bubble at Wabash, so it was nice to be able to put my knowledge in a broader context.”

 -Taylor Poor ‘06

       “During this year’s symposium, I had the opportunity to present my research in a poster session for graduate students.  I knew that presenting in the graduate student division would be a step up from the undergraduate student poster sessions I had presented in previously; however, I was uncertain of what to expect….Would I be asked challenging questions and be unable to answer? Would my results be subjected to harsh criticism?  Who would notice my work?

       The poster session, although nerve racking at times, turned out to be a very good experience.  My poster was visited by nearly a dozen people, many more than in the undergraduate poster sessions I had attended previously.  And although I didn’t have the answer to every question, the insightful comments I received helped me to examine my project from perspectives which I had not previously considered.  In this sense, the poster session was more than just a learning experience, it also served as a brainstorming session for future research experiments which I hope to perform in Dr. Porter’s laboratory during the coming years.”

 -Steven Rhodes ‘07

      “I was somewhat intimidated to attend the American Chemical Society (ACS) conference in Atlanta, intimidated by the level of academia that would be present at such an event.  However, my fears and anxiety were laid to rest while attending various lectures and poster sessions.  As a senior Chemistry major, I was more than prepared to handle the new and provocative information.   Since I will be teaching high school chemistry next year, I was particularly interested in Chemistry and Education.  I learned innovative techniques to better my classroom, my students, and myself.  Lecturers spoke of incorporation of community resources as well as standard teaching materials.”

-Ali Ahmed ‘06

       “Going to Atlanta for the ACS conference was, by far, one of the best times I’ve had in my four years at Wabash College.  I was able to learn about a great deal of chemistry research that is being performed today, and it was nice to be able to spend a few days away from campus with my fellow senior chemistry majors.  Another benefit that attending this conference afforded me was that I was able to make a number of contacts in the chemistry field.  I met some Wabash alumni in the chemistry field who gave me encouragement as I prepare to enter graduate school and also provided advice on how to use my Wabash degree to its highest potential.  The conference allowed me to see first-hand the type of research being performed at the graduate programs I applied to, and I had the opportunity to talk with some students who were also hoping to attend these programs.  This opportunity to interact with so many other people who have the same career interests as I do really renewed my excitement about chemistry.”

-Ben Edquist '06