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The Biology Program
The Biology
graduate program prepares students for further graduate study and
for private and public sector jobs in research, education, medicine,
and environmental management. Biology graduate students conduct
research under the guidance of one or more faculty members.
Research topics span a wide range of medically and environmentally
related topics in biology. Graduate coursework is available to
support the research effort. Graduate seminars targeted
cross-cutting, topical issues. Previous topics have included
astrobiology, aging, genomics, and nanotechnology.
Graduate Student
Financial Support
Faculty in the
Biology Department at New Mexico Tech have secured research funding
in recent years from multiple sources including the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the
Office of Naval Research, and the new Mexico Waste Management
Education and Research Consortium, and the New Mexico Water
Resources Research Institute. This extracurricular funding
provides stipends for graduate research assistants. Graduate
students are also supported by the NIH Bridges Program and the
Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN).
Research
Ongoing research
projects reflect many issues in medical and environmental biology,
including:
• Biomimetic
carbon dioxide
sequestration
•
Development of
novel molecular sensors for infectious agents
• The effects of
pollutants on the human immune system
• Microbial
diversity and biogeochemistry in extreme environments
•
Deep subsurface
microbiology
• Aging and the
effects of caloric restriction on resource allocation and lifespan
•
Insulin
and its messenger pathways.
Tom Kieft's
research has taken him and his students more than 3 km deep into the
gold mines of South Africa to collect ancient groundwater harboring
bacteria and archaea that survive and grow under conditions of
extreme heat and pressure. These microbes are metabolizing
geochemically generated energy sources (H2 and CH4)
and are thus functioning as an ecosystem that is completely
independent of photosynthesis. One can envision such a subsurface
ecosystem on another planet, e.g., Mars, even if the surface of that
planet is inhospitable to life. Kieft also collaborates with Snezna
Rogelj and Scott Shors in developing novel systems for detection of
pathogens in the environment.
Kevin Kirk
is an evolutionary ecologist who studies life history traits. He is
particularly interested in the response of lifespan to dietary
restriction. Feeding animals less food makes them live longer, and
we still do not understand why this works, either physiologically or
evolutionarily. Kevin is also interested in population and
community ecology, and has used planktonic rotifers as model systems
to investigate factors that affect species diversity.
Rebecca Reiss
studies
molecular evolution, which is the change in DNA sequence over time.
Determining DNA change is easy, but the estimation of time is
difficult. The projects in her lab are diverse in that they involve
bacteria, packrats, and primates, but they all are systems in which
DNA changes can be associated with an independent estimate of time.
The microbial communities that surround leaky underground storage
tanks quickly evolve the ability to break down xenobiotics and
incorporate the products into their own metabolism. The evolution of
the enzymes that break down the pollutant ethylene dichloride at a
site in Northern New Mexico are the subject of a project in her
lab. Another method to track the evolution of DNA sequences is to
examine DNA from fossils, a technique known as ancient DNA (aDNA).
In Rebecca's lab, DNA extracted from carbon-dated packrat pellets up
to 40,000 years old is analyzed by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to
determine its condition. It is known that in primates the movement
of mitochondrial sequences into the nucleus is a continuous
process. By comparing the evolutionary history of these
nuclear-located mitochondrial pseudogenes with their progenitor
mitochondrial sequence the time when the sequences moved can be
estimated.
Snezna Rogelj
is a cell biologist
who studies how environmental pollutants and various drugs affect
human immune system. Her students look at the ability of white blood
cells to recognize each other and respond various inflammatory
stimuli when exposed to pollutants and medicinal drugs (e.g.
tamoxifen, an anti-cancer drug and THC, the active ingredient in
marijuana). Dr. Rogelj is interested in biofilms, ubiquitous complex
three dimensional bacterial communities that are widespread in
nature and play an important role in human disease. In collaboration
with Dr. Frank Huang in Environmental Engineering Department at NMT,
she studies the structure, composition, growth and enzymatic means
of mitigation of medically relevant biofilms. One promising approach
to biofilm removal is based on the use of degradative enzymes
co-produced with antibiotic bacitracin by the biofilm-forming and
biofilm-degrading bacteria Bacillus subtilis. Dr. Rogelj is
also involved in numerous other collaborative projects; some of
these involve nanotechnology and include development of biosensors
and pathogen detection methods while others span the fields
chemistry, materials science, mathematics and physics.
Scott Shors
is a virologist who investigates how viruses evade the innate immune
response. The primary defense against viral infection is the
interferon response. The keystone to the interferon response is the
double stranded RNA (dsRNA) that is produced during every viral
infection. The cell senses this dsRNA and responds by synthesizing
and releasing interferon into the surrounding tissues. Interferon
acts as a signal these cells to synthesize antiviral enzymes. If
the infection spreads to these 'alerted' cells, the dsRNA that is
generated now activates the antiviral enzymes which will
dramatically curtail the infection. This is why a cold last two
days; a cell that is infected in the upper-respiratory tract senses
the dsRNA and secretes interferon to alert the neighboring cells.
When the infection spreads, the dsRNA that was generated activates
the antiviral enzymes that inhibit virus production. Why doesn't
the interferon response control herpesviruses, poxviruses, reovirus,
influenza, Ebola, hepatitis C, HIV, or West Nile virus? All of
these viruses have evolved mechanisms that thwart the interferon
response. Currently Scott's group is investigating how poxviruses,
herpes virus and picornaviruses evade the interferon response.
The university's
Pathogen Detection Program, funded by the Office of Naval
Research, began over a year-and-a-half before anthrax-laden letters
started making headlines across the United States.
Tom Kieft
and Snezna Rogelj of the New Mexico Tech Department of Biology now realize that the
processes and technologies they are developing may soon have
important implications in the nation's war against terrorism.
"Although we aren't
working on specific bioterrorism agents like anthrax or smallpox, we
are certainly making progress with some very real killers,
especially those typically found in closed environments such as
submarines," says Rogelj.
The
Pathogen Detection
Program is a coordinated effort to attack a very timely
problem, says Kieft, the principal investigator of the research
project, and by employing these novel approaches, several practical
applications may be found for many different pathogens.
"This research
project has taken on a whole different focus since September 11,"
Rogelj adds. "Now it's not only the soldier in a closed environment
that we're concerned about, but also the innocent child who might
become exposed to these pathogens. . . . For those of us working on
this project, the entire picture has changed."
The Pathogen
Detection project is now focused on developing novel biosensors for
protein infectious agents (prions).
Collaborations
Out department
actively collaborates with other departments at New Mexico Tech,
including Chemistry, Materials Engineering, Computer Science, and
Earth Science, as well as with researchers at other institutions.
Recent graduate
students have gone on to Ph.D. programs at Washington University,
Wake Forest University, and the University of Montana. Others have
entered medical school at the University of New Mexico. Those
entering the workforce directly are working in research at the
University of California, the University of New Mexico, the Lovelace
Respiratory Research Institute, and Los Alamos National laboratory.
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