Linda Columbus Investigates Cell Membranes With Large New Grants

On January 15th, Dan Fox was invited to give a talk at the UVA Structural & Computational Biology and Biophysics Biophysics Program Retreat. He presented his progress towards the NMR structure determination of OpaI

Alison received a Biophysical Society 2010 Student Travel Award and was chosen for a platform talk”The Spontaneous Refolding of Opacity-Associated Proteins into Lipid Membranes” at the 54th annual meeting in February

CAREER: The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for [...]

Alison’s poster entitled “Opa Proteins of Neisseria: Liposome Reconstitution and Interactions with a Human CEACAM Receptor” shared second place in the Departmental 3rd year poster award. She receives a monetary award and presented her research to the department on April 24th.

This last February and March, Dan Fox presented his NMR studies of Opa proteins at the Frontiers in NMR Biology Keystone Symposium Brett Kroncke (in photo) presented his EPR studies and Chris Reyes presented his Opa refolding and NMR studies at the 53rd Biophysical Society Meeting. Thien Nguyen presented her mixed micelle refolding studies at [...]

Jackie (1st year at UVA) will join the Columbus Lab this summer to begin research on the reconstitution of Opa protiens into lipid vesicles. She received a stipend from the College Science Scholar Program.

Teach for America started in 1990 with Wendy Kopp’s senior thesis at Princeton University. She raised $2.5 million and hired 500 teachers in six low-income communities. Now, Teach for america has 20,000 teachers and Rita will be one next year.

The Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards Program, administered by the Faculty Senate, funds outstanding undergraduate research projects in the spring and/or summer for current second and third-year undergraduate students.

The Columbus Lab received their first NIH RO1 grant.

The 8th grade class of Kim Taylor visited on November 13, 2008 for an introduction to a research laboratory. The visit included two chemistry demonstrations (elephant’s toothpaste and molecular clock) and a tour of the laboratory by two graduate students Alison Dewald and Celine Griot, interactive molecular graphics by undergraduate Thien Nguyen and Prof. Columbus, [...]

Each year the Mead Endowment invites about a dozen faculty members to become a members of the Mead Honored Faculty. The participants are handpicked by their Deans for their outstanding potential to become a friend of students and an example for other faculty. Article in the Cavalier Daily Mead Endowment Website UVA Today article

Thien and Chris presented a poster titled “Cloning, expression and purification of Opa proteins from Neisseria gonorrhoeae and a human CEACAM binding partner” at the ACS meeting hosted at UVA on April 18th. They received 4th place in the poster competition with a monetary value of $50.

On May 13th, the 800 MHz NMR spectrometer with cryoprobe was delivered. Pictures of the installation can be found here.

The Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards Program, administered by the Faculty Senate, funds outstanding undergraduate research projects in the spring and/or summer for current second and third-year undergraduate students.

The College of Arts & Science awarded Justin a grant to conduct research in the Columbus lab for the summer. He will continue his work on the physical properties of detergent mixtures.

Thien Nguyen (Bass Scholarship), Rita Digrazia (Bass Scholarship), and Ashley Keller (Departement Fellowship) received awards to conduct research this summer.

The purpose of the Jeffress Trust is to support basic research in chemical, medical, or other scientific fields through grants to educational and research institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Grants are given to assist scientists in such institutions to conduct investigations in the natural sciences, generally considered to include chemistry, physics, biology (with the [...]

As a part of the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JSCG) biological targets, the structures of soluble domains of membrane proteins from Thermotoga maritima were pursued. Here, we report the crystal structure of the soluble domain of TM1634, a putative membrane protein of 128 residues (15.1 kDa) and unknown function. The soluble domain of TM1634 [...]

On January 26th, 2008, the Chemistry and Mathamatics Department joined the University of Virginia’s Young Woman Leadership Program ( YWLP) to put on a day of fun activities in the laboratory and class room at the University of Virginia. YWLP is a mentoring program that empowers middle school girls to be leaders by combining the [...]