Research Highlights

ChristianaCare Gene Editing Institute, a member of the Delaware INBRE network, recently produced a video following DE INBRE researcher Dr. Natalia Rivera-Torres on her journey from being a student and mentee at the Institute to becoming a Principal Investigator.

South Dakota colleges and universities will send 11 outstanding undergraduate student researchers to the State Capitol next week to share their research work with lawmakers and the public. The 2022 Student Research Poster Session, co-sponsored by SD EPSCoR, is open to the public.

These 11 student researchers represent students statewide who conduct research in a variety of disciplines. Now in its 25th year, the event showcases research and creative activities of undergraduate students, as well as highlights successful faculty research and commercialization efforts. The session is organized by the South Dakota Board of Regents and SD EPSCoR (South Dakota’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research).

Nebraska EPSCoR engineer Mathias Schubert added his leading expertise in ellipsometry – measuring the change in polarization as light reflects or transmits from a material structure – to an international team including scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Society, for research that appears in the highly-regarded journal, Nature.

“Hyperbolic shear polaritons in low-symmetry crystals” was published in the February 23, 2022 edition of the publication. The article’s authors believe their “results will motivate new directions for polariton physics in low-symmetry materials, which include geological minerals, many common oxides, and organic crystals, greatly expanding the material base and extending design opportunities for compact photonic devices.”

Vermont EPSCoR Scientist Brian Beckage is part of a team that published a study in the journal Nature suggesting that “the world has moved decisively away from a no-policy, business-as-usual” pathway on greenhouse gas emissions. The team concludes, the planet is likely heading toward temperatures by the end of this century that are substantially lower than the 3.9˚C (about 7˚F) of warming predicted in the absence of climate policy.

Human-caused climate change is just that: human-caused. However, most models of climate change treat the behavior of people — our choices, policies, and perceptions — as a fixed starting point. They develop a range of possible scenarios and policy pathways — and then use those as predetermined and static patterns to run models of the physical system.

Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Hollings Cancer Center researcher John O’Bryan and colleagues have demonstrated a new therapeutic way to block a protein that is frequently mutated in cancers. These proof-of-principle findings were published in Cell Reports. This work, which involves inhibiting the oncogenic protein RAS using small molecules, lays a strong foundation for the development of clinical anti-cancer therapies and provides a framework for other groups to target RAS in more effective ways. “The RAS protein, which was considered undruggable, is in fact able to be targeted by drugs,” said O’Bryan.

The researchers are very hopeful that this discovery can be used more comprehensively in the future. While cancers do adapt and mutate to become resistant to therapeutics, new drugs based on this concept might serve as additional tools in the arsenal to treat cancer.

EPSCoR partner North Dakota’s Gateway to Science continues to deliver hands-on STEM programming throughout North Dakota. Gateway to Science on the Go was recently in Jamestown with its STEMzone program at Lincoln Elementary School.

STEMzone is a carnival-style event with STEM stations that allow students to engage in hands-on learning experiences in STEM. The STEMzone in Jamestown included stations where students could work on circuits, do brain teasers, look at objects through microscopes, build structures, create and test air-powered vehicles, and more.

As the world searches for and demands more sustainable sources of energy and materials, plant biomass may provide the solution by serving as a renewable resource for biomaterials and biofuel production. However, until now, the complex physical and chemical interactions in plant biomass has been a challenge in post-harvest processing.

In a new study published today in Nature Communications, LSU Department of Chemistry Associate Professor Tuo Wang and his research team reveal how carbohydrates interact with lignin to form plant biomass. This new information can help advance the development of better technology to use biomass for energy and materials.

The Wang research team examined the nanoscale assembly of lignocellulosic components in multiple plant species, including grasses and hardwood and softwood species. The grasses contain many food crops, such as maize, and are the primary feedstock for biofuel production in the U.S.. Woody plants, often used for building construction materials, have become promising candidates for the next generation of biofuel to reduce the dependence on food crops.

Portions of this work was sponsored by grants from the DOE and NSF.

A Louisiana State University chemist and her research team have discovered a promising new treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, or TNBC, an aggressive form of breast cancer with limited treatment options. Compared to other types of breast cancer, TNBC has a shorter overall survival rate, and is more common in women of color and women under the age of 40.

A portion of this research was funded by the NIH INBRE program.

Pangolins are unique, scaled mammals found across Asia and in parts of Africa. Claire Terhune, University of Arkansas, and a team of researchers funded by NSF are using pangolin fossils to better understand the evolution and biogeography of ancient pangolins during the Pleistocene.

This work was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Terhune’s collaborators were Sabrina Curran at Ohio University, Timothy Gaudin the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Alexandru Petculescu at Emil Racoviţă Institute of Speleology in Bucharest.

In an attempt to study microbes in their natural environment, co-chief scientists Drs. Eric Wommack and Shawn Polson led other members of the Viral Ecology and Informatics Lab (VEIL) in an NSF EPSCoR-funded mission on the R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware’s 146-foot ocean-going research vessel. They spent eight days at sea to conduct what is known as a Lagrangian Experiment, monitoring a single water mass over time.

The members of the VEIL involved in the experiment included Wommack; Polson; Barbra Ferrell, VEIL lab coordinator; Rachel Keown, doctoral student in biological sciences; Amanda Zahorik, doctoral student in biological sciences; and Amelia Harrison, VEIL technician and master’s degree graduate in marine biosciences. In addition, they were joined by Bruce Kingham, director of the UD Sequencing and Genotyping Center.