Just Ask

Dr. Biology

Just Ask

Fall

2007

Volume 3

No. 2

Introducing Dr. Biology

Sculpting Superheroes

Mapping Cures

Just Ask

Dr. Biology

Just Ask

Contents...

25%

SCS-COC-001090

Green technology, development, haute couture, even green cuisine, and being environmentally and socially responsible is in fashion. “Green is the new black,” one publication recently declared. While it might be fashion for some, ASU and the SOLS Magazine have been upping our environmental mindfulness.

As a magazine, it isn’t easy to be mindful: we have carefully conserved our writers, editors, and researchers, but going green takes more dollars when it comes to our medium – paper. Traditional methods and bulk use have kept prices low on that crisp, white sheet that graces our computer printer, our copy machine, and our newsletter. However, starting with this issue, we’re opting to shoulder the extra cost to do our part, both environmentally and in support of greener business practices.Most paper arises through the practice of random harvesting of forests, chlorine bleach, toxic inks or solvents, and the use of lots of water and energy, resulting in substantial carbon emissions, among other waste products. As some profound literature has found a vehicle through which to change the world, it’s seemed like a fair exchange. We are fortunate though that today, with the increase in interest in conservation, sustainability, and new technologies based on environmentally aware practices, we are in a better position to tell our stories on our chosen medium in a greener way.

�is issue of the School of Life Sciences magazine inaugurates our first use of Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) papers and a local, FSC certified printing company. �e Council is an international organization whose mission is “to promote responsible management of forest, eliminate habitat destruction, water pollution, displacement of indigenous peoples.” �ey review a paper company’s practices, which means they track each step in the production of paper, from the logging of well-managed groves, to the use of hydrogen peroxides instead of chlorine, to the laying down of biodegradable soy inks, and the recycling and recovery of solvents. Awareness can be said to be the first step toward making a difference, so as you turn each sheet, to read about professor Elliot Goldstein’s devotion to teaching and genetics, or how associate professor Cheryl Nickerson’s experiments in space can affect health on earth, or about our other faculty and student science superheroes, know that as temperatures rise outside (and in ASU offices), lights are dutifully turned off, and computers hibernate, the School of Life Sciences, in addition to our scientific accomplishments, is committed to stepping up, for the environment, for our youth, and our local companies.

MARGARET COULOMBE

SUSTAINING AWARENESS

GREENEOLOGY: A STUDY OF INVESTMENT IN SUSTAINABILITY

072962a 2 8/29/07 9:49:56 AM

1

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Green technology, development, haute couture, even green cuisine, and being environmentally and socially responsible is in fashion. “Green is the new black,” one publication recently declared. While it might be fashion for some, ASU and the SOLS Magazine have been upping our environmental mindfulness.

As a magazine, it isn’t easy to be mindful: we have carefully conserved our writers, editors, and researchers, but going green takes more dollars when it comes to our medium – paper. Traditional methods and bulk use have kept prices low on that crisp, white sheet that graces our computer printer, our copy machine, and our newsletter. However, starting with this issue, we’re opting to shoulder the extra cost to do our part, both environmentally and in support of greener business practices.Most paper arises through the practice of random harvesting of forests, chlorine bleach, toxic inks or solvents, and the use of lots of water and energy, resulting in substantial carbon emissions, among other waste products. As some profound literature has found a vehicle through which to change the world, it’s seemed like a fair exchange. We are fortunate though that today, with the increase in interest in conservation, sustainability, and new technologies based on environmentally aware practices, we are in a better position to tell our stories on our chosen medium in a greener way.

This issue of the School of Life Sciences magazine inaugurates our first use of Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) papers and a local, FSC certified printing company. The Council is an international organization whose mission is “to promote responsible management of forest, eliminate habitat destruction, water pollution, displacement of indigenous peoples.” They review a paper company’s practices, which mean they track each step in the production of paper, from the logging of well-managed groves, to the use of hydrogen peroxides instead of chlorine, to the laying down of biodegradable soy inks, and the recycling and recovery of solvents. Awareness can be said to be the first step toward making a difference, so as you turn each sheet, to read about professor Elliot Goldstein’s devotion to teaching and genetics, or how associate professor Cheryl Nickerson’s experiments in space can affect health on earth, or about our other faculty and student science superheroes, know that as temperatures rise outside (and in ASU offices), lights are dutifully turned off, and computers hibernate, the School of Life Sciences, in addition to our scientific accomplishments, is committed to stepping up, for the environment, for our youth, and our local companies.

margaret Coulombe

SuStaining awareneSS

GreeneoloGy: a study of investment in sustainability

director’s note 2in or outer space 3mapping Communities 6Comic belief 9Gene cycles 12Capturing nature 14mentoring sCene 16Clinical diagnostics 19body at work 21Whitefly surgeon 23Recognizing excellence 24observations back cover

SolS Publication Staffmanaging editor: margaret Coulombe

editorial board: Patty duncan, elaine finke, Charles Kazilek and Robert Page

Writers: margaret Coulombe, dave brown, elizabeth davidson, faye farmer, Rachel Hayes, Kate ihle and Phillip tarrant

art direction and design: Jacob sahertian

design collaborator: Charles Kazilek

illustrations: sabine deviche

Color: Jacob sahertian, sabine deviche

Photography: Charles Kazilek, Jacob sahertian, thomas story, margaret Coulombe

funding: school of life sciences, arizona state university

668/0807/1m

on the cover

Introducing Dr. Biologystory on page 9art by sabine deviche, color by Jacob sahertian

16

14

3

6

How can sending pathogens into space enhance our understanding of their disease-causing mechanisms on earth? Nickerson says the first thing to remember is that technology developed for space flight has routinely changed our earthbound life already.

2

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

3

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

DirectOr’S nOte

Spaceflight offers innovative research platform for infectious disease controlmargaret Coulombe

NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams set new records for women in space this summer by completing the “longest duration in spaceflight and most hours outside a spacecraft by a female,” a feat that took eleven years to accomplish. However, with America’s future space travel hopes centered on Mars and beyond, such records may soon be broken and more quickly reset by both men and women as distances and, hence, time in spaceflight increase. But before technology supports such things as hotel chains on the Moon or humans sledding on ice on Jupiter’s satellite, Europa, some very common challenges need to be understood; things that make astronauts, as well as people on the street, sneeze, retch and reach for the medicine cabinet.

Fortunately for us all, Cheryl Nickerson, an earthbound associate professor in the School of Life Sciences and researcher in the Biodesign Institute at ASU, herself a qualified astronaut candidate finalist (2004), hopes that her NASA-funded work to develop innovative experimental models for infectious disease and drug development on earth and in space will transform medicine’s understanding of the forces that shape pathogens and their virulence.

“Space flight is a platform that can provide novel enabling technology to advance our life on earth. Those tax dollars we invest in NASA’s manned space programs propel new product discovery that impacts our lives on a daily basis right here on earth, including advances in health and medicine,” Nickerson says.

reSearch

The School of Life Sciences is entering its fourth year of existence. Looking back over my more than three years, I have seen a remarkable transformation. We have added nearly 30 faculty, expanded our undergraduate and graduate enrollments, and truly become a school without boundaries or borders. We network across ASU campuses and the business and clinical community of the Valley, covering life sciences from molecules to the human dimensions of biology.

The School of Life Sciences’ purpose is to engage young minds and create the intellectual foundations and technical skills for the workforce of tomorrow. In that light, we are proud that graduates from SOLS form the largest block (nearly a third) of students from any institution accepted into the first class in the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University. Congratulations to our SOLS’ alumni, now part of the College of Medicine-Phoenix class of 2011: Darrell Brimhall, Greg Burnett, Brian Geyer, Margaret Mitropanopoulos, Leslie Padrnos, Vicki Sein, and Casey Solem.

Many of our faculty, specifically David Young, Alan Rawls, Jeanne Wilson-Rawls, Kenro Kusumi, Douglas Lake and Jason Robert, have played significant roles with their UA colleagues in developing a curriculum and forging a clinical education for the College of Medicine-Phoenix that looks toward the dawn of new age of medicine and its technologies, cures and ethical challenges.

SOLS faculty, students and alumni have been engaged in scholarship, teaching, and entrepreneurship, making profound contributions, technically, clinically, intellectually, and socially, and bridging disciplines, extending collaborative ventures, and forging new frontiers internationally, from bacterial biofuels research to social insects, genomes and aging; ecosystem dynamics and astrobiology to vaccine discovery, sustainability, public health, and more. You can read about them in past issues of our SOLS Newsletter and the present and future issues of SOLS Magazine.

I hope that this issue of our transformed SOLS Magazine gives you a sense of those who’ve dedicated lifetimes toward education – Elliot Goldstein, a geneticist and forensics DNA expert, Diana Mass and the Clinical Laboratory Sciences group, and Charles Kazilek, who blends art and science in his innovative Web site for children, Ask-a-Biologist – to those taking their first steps, like graduate student Kevin McCluney, who mentors high school students in pursuit of science fair gold and who just might be in the College of Medicine-Phoenix class of 2012.

robert e. Page, Jr.

The School of Life Sciences’ purpose is to engage young minds and create the intellectual foundations and technical skills for the workforce of tomorrow.

4

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

5

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Nickerson points to our weather tracking and advanced defense system security satellites, both of which are a result of NASA technology. She notes too that flat panel screen televisions, cellular phones, radiation-blocking sunglasses, water purification systems, robotic wheelchairs, CAT scans, surgical lasers, and research for new treatments for osteoporosis, cancer and diabetes have arisen from or been improved by NASA technologies.

“So the fact that we have the potential to provide novel cures and therapeutics to treat infectious diseases, as a result of the manned space program, shouldn’t come as a surprise,” she explains.

How did Nickerson’s “out-of-this-world” thoughts about pathogens first take flight?

She says that while she always knew she would become a scientist through the encouragement of her parents (her father is Max Nickerson, professor emeritus and one of the world’s leading authorities in vertebrate zoology and herpetology, curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, and a former ASU graduate himself ), it wasn’t until graduate school that the “space bug” bit. As a doctoral student in microbiology at Louisiana State University, she met fellow student Mark Ott, an engineer with interests in health systems in space travel. Their common research interests developed into productive collaborations as they both advanced in their careers. Nickerson took her first faculty position at Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans. Ott was hired into NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he currently works in the Habitability and Environmental Factors Division, assessing microbial contamination issues on the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. Together, they worked to experimentally understand and mitigate the risks and health challenges presented by space travel.

According to Nickerson, past studies show that microbial contamination presents a health threat in space, as on earth. The presence of pathogenic microorganisms aboard spacecraft is well-documented, and infectious disease events have occurred in flight, including a debilitating Pseudomonas aeruginosa urinary tract infection of a crew member during the Apollo 13 mission. In addition, the Space Shuttle and ISS offer close quarters and recirculated water and air, increasing the potential for exposure to infectious pathogens. Moreover, through the multi-national efforts of the space program, crew members from different countries carry microbes native to their endemic geographical locations, which can be problematic for others. Another complicating factor is that spaceflight weakens the

immune system. Also, the effectiveness of antibiotics as a countermeasure against in-flight infectious disease is unclear. Nickerson points to reports of increased microbial resistance to antibiotics during spaceflight. All these factors combine to create an increased risk for infectious disease events during space flight. In fact, according to NASA, approximately 25% of Shuttle missions have at least one crew member affected by a minor infectious illness. So while the actual incidence of in flight infectious disease “is not currently an acute problem,” as the focus shifts toward longer duration missions, such events could potentially compromise the health, safety and performance of the crew and negatively impact mission success.

Some big questions remain too about how pathogens are affected by space travel: does space affect the disease-causing potential of the pathogens themselves? Do pathogens behave in the same way in space as on earth? Nickerson and Ott became the first to pursue answers to such questions; they developed ground-based analogues of spaceflight, and then translated their work into true spaceflight experiments on board the Shuttle and ISS.

It took five years to get their experiments airborne, with the participation of dozens of collaborators across the country. Four of their studies have now “flown” on the NASA Shuttle and the International Space Station, Nickerson says. The most recent experiment went up on Atlantis Shuttle Flight STS-115 (12A) in September 2006. While in orbit, Astronaut Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper manipulated experiments designed to assess the effect of spaceflight on microbial gene expression and virulence in the following model microbial systems: 1) Salmonella typhimurium (a common food-borne pathogen and an important cause of disqualification of pre-flight foods destined for the International Space Station); 2) Pseudomonas aeruginosa (a contaminant on spacecrafts and responsible for an incapacitating urinary tract infection of a crewmember on Apollo 13); 3) Candida albicans (a yeast commonly found in the human body that can lead to infections and oral diseases and which has previously caused in-flight infections); and 4) Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a budding yeast used to make bread and beer). The results of the four studies analyzed on earth by Nickerson’s team have the group excited.

“Our results show that space flight changes the disease-causing potential of some of the pathogens. For example, it made Salmonella better able to cause infectious disease at lower doses. In other words, it became a more potent pathogen,” Nickerson says. This is an important finding, since the combination of an immunocompromised astronaut with a pathogen that is more virulent could have a significantly negative impact on crew health and mission success.

“In addition, we found that spaceflight globally altered the gene expression profiles of these pathogens as well as their cellular morphology. A key finding is that we have identified a likely global regulator involved in the response of these cells to spaceflight. This could be an important development in our effort to understand at the molecular level how spaceflight affects the biology of living cells, both microbial and human, and how that understanding might be translated to the clinical bedside to advance human health on earth,” Nickerson states.

What changes can make a bad bug worse? Nickerson showed in her ground-based spaceflight analogue work that Salmonella better resists being killed by stresses relevant to those that it encounters during infection in the host. Those stresses include heat stress (moving from outside to inside the body), acid stress (the acid condition of the stomach); osmotic stress (changes in the water and salt concentration); and macrophages (an early defense mechanism of the body to infection). She points out too that these phenotypic changes are reflected in the altered gene expression profiles of Salmonella during ground-based studies, as well as during true spaceflight where she found alterations in over 160 genes, “several of which enhance the ability of the bacteria to cause disease.”

Nickerson says too that understanding the molecular effects of mechanical stressors, like fluid shear, on living cells is important because “mechanical force is an important underlying cause for many different kinds of human disease: cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and osteoporosis. “And while we know there is a link between disease and mechanical forces, we know few of the molecular mechanisms behind this,” Nickerson notes.

“We need to know molecular mechanisms to develop new therapeutics and other treatments to treat and prevent disease. With our present model, we have the potential to contribute meaningfully to this emerging and important field of study,” she adds.

Nickerson’s excitement is infectious, so to speak, not surprisingly, as the potential impact of her group’s findings could advance human health globally. Based on her group’s most recent in-flight findings, they’ve received new funding from NASA in anticipation of another flight experiment in the future. The costs of putting experiments in space are dizzying at nearly $10,000 a pound.

While Nickerson has a multitude of outside interests, including being an avid sports car enthusiast, participating in team sports, strength training, and collecting antiques, her focus and “what I live and sleep and eat for” is her research, envisioning the possibility of “providing a piece of the puzzle to advance human health.”

“You need to make this world a better place when you leave – no matter what your field is – and hopefully this is what we are doing,” says Nickerson. Will she achieve her goals? Perhaps the Kennedy Space Center bumper sticker on her wall says it best: “Failure is not an option.”

To listen to Cheryl Nickerson talk about her work, go to the Ask-a-Biologist podcast: http://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts. Ask-a-Biologist is a School of Life Sciences web page developed for K-12, their teachers and parents.

reSearch

Courtesy of NaSa

Biotic Communitiesbiotic12b polygonBIOMENAME12A

Alaskan Swamp Scrub

Adirondack−Appalachian Alpine Tundra

Adirondack−Appalachian Subalpine Conifer Forest

Alaska−Yukon Subarctic Conifer Conifer Forest

Alaskan Tundra

Alaskan−Alpine Tundra

California Chaparral

California Coastalscrub

California Evergreen Forest and Woodland

California Valley Grassland

Campechian Montane Evergreen Forest

Campechian Semi−evergreen Forest

Campechian and Veracruz Savanna Grassland

Canadian (Low Arctic) Tundra

Canadian Taiga

Caribbean Cloud and Montane Evergreen Forests

Caribbean Dry Deciduous and Semi−deciduous Forests

Caribbean Lowland Evergreen and Semi−evergreen Forest

Caribbean Savanna Grassland

Caribbean Thornscrub

Cascade−Sierran Alpine Tundra

Cascade−Sierran Montane Conifer Forest

Cascade−Sierran Subalpine Conifer Forest

s

Central American (Guanacaste) Dry Forest

Central American Cloud Forest

Central American Evergreen Rain Forest

Central American Paramo

Central American Savanna Grassland

Central American Semi−evergreen Forest

Chihuahuan Desertscrub Cochise−Tranpecos

Chihuahuan Desertscrub Mampimi

Chihuahuan Desertscrub Saldan

Chihuahuan Interior Chaparral

Floridian Evergreen Forest

Great Basin Conifer Woodland

Great Basin Desertscrub

Great Basin Montane Scrub

Great Basin Shrub−Grassland

Greenlandian Coastal Tundra

Guatemalan Cloud Forest

Guatemalan Evergreen Forest and Woodland

Guatemalan Montane Conifer Forest

Guerreran Dry Deciduous Forest

Guerreran Evergreen Forest and Woodland

Guerreran Savanna Grassland

Guerreran Thornscrub

Gulf Coastal Grassland

Madrean Evergreen Forest and Woodland

Madrean Montane Conifer Forest

Mohave Desertscrub

Nayarit Semi−evergreen Forest

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Beech & Maple

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Conifer & Deciduous

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Maple & Basswood

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Mixed Mesophytic

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Oak & Chestnut

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Oak & Hickory

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Oak, Pine & Hickory

Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Western Mesophytic

Open Water Lakes

Oregonian Coastal Conifer Forest

Oregonian Deciduous and Evergreen Forests

Permanent Ice and Snow

Plains Grassland, Midgrass Communities

Plains Grassland, Shortgrass Communities

Plains Grassland, Tallgrass Communities

Polar (High Arctic) Tundra

Rocky Mountain Montane Conifer Forest

Rocky Mountain Subalpine Conifer Forest

Rocky Mountain and Great Basin Alpine Tundra

San Lucan Dry Deciduous Forest

San Lucan Evergreen Forest and Woodland

San Lucan Thornscrub

Semidesert Grassland

Sinaloan Dry Deciduous (Monsoon) Forest

Sinaloan Thornscrub

Sitka Coastal Conifer Forest

Sonoran Desertscrub Arizona Uplands

Sonoran Desertscrub Central Gulf Coast

Sonoran Desertscrub Lower Colorado River Valley

Sonoran Desertscrub Plains of Sonora

Sonoran Desertscrub Vizcaino

Southeastern Deciduous and Evergreen Forests

Southeastern Swamp and Riparian Forest

Southwestern (Arizona) Interior Chaparral

Southwestern Deciduous and Evergreen Forests, Balcones Subdi

Tamaulipan Semi−deciduous Forest

Tamaulipan Thornscrub

Transvolcanic Alpine Tundra

Transvolcanic Evergreen Foreast and Woodland

Transvolcanic Montane Conifer Forest

Undifferentiated Nearctic Wetlands

Undifferentiated Neotropical Wetlands

Veracruz Cloud Forest

Veracruz Evergreen Rain Forest

Veracruz Semi−evergreen Forest

Yucatan Dry Deciduous Forest

Yucatan Semi−deciduous Forest

Biotic Communities of North AmericaDavid E. Brown, Thomas C. Brennan, Susan F. Franson, Frank W. Reichenbacher, and Peter J. Unmack

6

SOLS

200

7 | v

olU

mE

3 N

o. 2

7

SOLS 2007 | vo

lUmE 3 N

o. 2

A Continent of Many ColorsNew biotic community maps enable biologists to ask the right questions.

By DaviD E. BRoWN, lES laNDRUm aND ThomaS C. BRENNaN

His voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle and across South America was Charles Darwin’s only major field trip. But that illustrious venture, bolstered by the then accumulating knowledge of the world’s biota, enabled him and Alfred Russell Wallace to postulate evolutionary theory and change our understanding of life on earth. By understanding the growing body of knowledge regarding the world’s plant and animal distributions, the two British naturalists were able to use their observations to ask the right questions. This same process is at work today. Biologists continue to ponder plant and animal distributions hoping to unravel the evolutionary reasons for these occurrences. Now, thanks to a relatively advanced inventory of the world’s natural vegetation and its animal inhabitants, we are able to pose an ever increasing array of questions.

Biotic communities are regional plant formations that evolved within particular climatic patterns, each characterized by a particular suite of plant and animal species. As such, biotic communities are useful in describing the habitat affinities of various taxa and determining their biogeographic distributions. By synthesizing the past efforts of plant and animal ecologists, scientists can develop hierarchical, computer-compatible classifications for these biotic communities, as we have done, one formulated on the limiting effects of moisture and temperature minima on plant structure and composition. From these, a series of colorful maps can in turn be generated. Our biotic maps, digitized and enhanced by SOLS technicians Tom Brennan, Abhijeeth Premanath Aarey, and Peter Unmack and published in Canotia (http://lifesciences.asu.edu/herbarium/canotia.htm), an on-line journal of Arizona botany and mycology published by Les Landrum and Scott Bates of the ASU herbarium, have allowed biologists all over the world access to understanding about the biotic communities of Arizona, the “Southwest,” and North America.

Choosing colors for biotic maps needs to be carefully considered. Ours utilizes the color scheme developed by ecological cartographers Henri Gaűssen and Miklos Udvardy in 1975. In this ecological classification system, arid habitats are represented by light colors, the shades becoming progressively darker in the wetter communities until the most mesic entities are represented by solid, dark colors. Cold habitats are cold, dull colors – grays, dark blues, and purples. As communities become progressively warmer, the colors representing them become brighter until the brilliant warm colors of the tropics – yellows, oranges, scarlets, and magentas are used to represent the formations depicted. As a general rule, tundra communities are shades of gray, temperate grasslands are depicted in various tones of brown, conifer forests by

Charting

As communities become progressively warmer, the colors representing them become brighter until the brilliant warm colors of the tropics...

Biotic Communities of ArizonaDavid E. Brown, Thomas C. Brennan, and Andrew T. Holycross

8

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

mE

3 N

o. 2

Somewhere in the

warmth of the desert...

THOOM! SHRAAAACK! KABOOM!Would you say these words represent the language traditionally found in scientific manuals or books? At first you might say, “No.” Science is serious business, right? Not exactly…

ZOOOOOWNT! Jumping from the proverbial phone booth to save the day is Charles Kazilek, ASU alumnus and the architect of School of Life Sciences’ children’s Web site, Ask-a-Biologist, and its purveyor of science-fun and fact (and his enthusiastic avatar), Dr. Biology.

We Need Your

Help!

purples and blues, temperate forests and chaparral by combinations of blues and greens, thornscrubs and savannas as yellows and oranges, tropical deciduous forests in shades of red, and tropical evergreen forests in violets and magentas. Selecting the actual color to represent a biotic community was difficult due to the number of communities involved, but was greatly facilitated by the use of a Pantone color wheel in which more than 3,000 color shades are arranged according to the percentage sequence of four basic colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). ArcMap was used to assign each community the proper color values of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). This arrangement not only illustrates the moisture and temperature gradient of each biotic community, it enables biologists to ask the right question on a continental scale.

Earlier versions of these biotic community maps have proven useful to anthropologists, archeologists, biologists, climatologists, ecologists, and other scientists interested in the assessment, delineation and stratification of biotic resources including the identification of natural areas. These maps and classification system are used by the Rangelands Group of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program, the Arizona and New Mexico Game and Fish departments, and other agencies charged with biotic resource inventory. Moreover, the maps have been used to digitally plot numerous plant and animal distributions. A “Google Scholar Search” of the scientific literature listed more than 1,000 citations for either the biotic community classification system or an accompanying map. Recent examples of the former are the reptile distribution maps promulgated by Tom Brennan and Andy Holycross and the Southwest Environmental Information Network maintained by SOLS’ Vascular Plant Herbarium at http://seinet.asu.

A recent expansion of the biotic mapping effort has included the production of a digitized map of North America’s biotic communities, one compatible with maps of Arizona and the Southwest. For a base chart, using the GIS software ArcInfo, we enhanced an earlier 1:10,000,000 biotic communities map by adding political boundaries and some large rivers. Some of the larger biotic communities were then divided into recognizable subdivisions including the Sonoran Desert, the Northeastern Deciduous Forest, Plains Grassland, Chihuahuan Desert and Great Basin Desert. We also added a Balcones Woodland for the Edwards Plateau region in Texas.

Such maps not only help us better visualize the world; they help the world appreciate biogeography. Both the classification and maps have been used by PhotoAssist, Inc. to design the biome series of stamps issued by the U. S. Post Office. When using these stamps to pay your bills, you are sending a bit of SOLS around the world.

Charting

written by Margaret CoulombeIllustrations by Sabine Deviche

10

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

11

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Remember how you nurtured your polliwogs in a bucket until they became frogs, or created a volcano for a school project or played a computer game as a child? There was excitement embedded there in what were serious discoveries, as well as fun. As the School of Life Sciences’ director of technology integration and outreach, Kazilek debunks the mythos that communicating science is about monotonous speech, dull language, and topics that are potentially hard to fathom. He puts the BZAAAPP into science communication for children, teachers and parents through a variety of intriguing and accessible creations, most recently: The Mysterious World of Dr. Biology, a science-based comic book, and the Ask-a-Biologist podcast.

How can a comic book be considered a serious learning tool? Well, there is a lot out there about the educational value of this medium of communication. Don’t let the word get out to the kids, but it is all in how you present things. For example, you can have a series of pictures of scientific instruments, and then a chart of their uses, and ask kids to match the pictures with the descriptions. You can let them know that the exercise meets Arizona Standards for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Boring!!!

Or you can take them on an adventure: Dr. Biology has a dilemma. “Something strange is happening in his laboratory…” In a series of classified security reports, a jumble of images of people, machines, landscapes, and animals are presented. The confidential report says that the sound and the order of events have been lost. And while there is a written key to help kids identify the technology, the focus is entirely on the creation of the story that links all the items together.

“My goal was to first provide a tool for language arts teachers to engage students in writing and developing stories, not necessarily to target the biological sciences, but to make biology topics accessible in language arts classes in a unique way,” Kazilek says.

Kazilek says he was concerned because over the last ten years that he’s been operating his Ask-a-Biologist Web site and answering questions sent in by students all over the world, he’s seen a general decline in the quality of writing and communications skills. While he could have taken a more conventional route, he stuck with his mantra, “capture their imagination and their minds will follow,” and developed a comic book alternative.

As an artist, scientist, and technological whiz, Kazilek’s impulses to wed his interests, learning, and fun are reflected in his innovative approaches to all his creative ventures. He’s recently stepped into the world of broadcasting. His podcasts are taking students, teachers, and parents on an aural journey: into space on a shuttle launch with microbiologist Cheryl Nickerson and into the front

row of a concert hall to hear music composed by butterfly researcher Ron Rutowski. And while listeners are virtually tramping in

Mongolia with ecologist Andrew Smith to study the furry pika, or through the city of

Washington, D.C. to talk with a film producer and a science journalist, they get a sense of who the people are behind the stereotypes.

Kazilek’s podcasts are crafted to give voice to how creative people approach their lives, their sciences, and allow the scientists themselves to share the exciting aspects of being a researcher with youth who will become the next generation of explorers. Kazilek’s podcast persona, Dr. Biology, makes it all accessible to the youth in grades K-12. In fact, in fall 2007, he will launch a podcast contest, inviting young podcasters to record their own interviews and compete. The winners will come to ASU, meet faculty in School of Life Sciences, and produce a podcast that will be aired on the Ask-a-Biologist Web site (http://askabiologist.asu.edu).

“Who better to talk and get other students interested in the cool parts of science than young students? These are the future scientists, journalists, and we hope better informed citizens, who will be making decisions and setting policies,” says Kazilek.

The Ask-a-Biologist Web site has won numerous awards for its quality, content and approach. The site receives more than 1,500 unique visitors each day, with more than 6,000 - 8,000 downloads of PDF content per month. One key component to this Web site is the one-to-one exchange of advanced researchers with K-12 children, as opposed to a static database. Children from around the world submit between five and fifty questions to Dr. Biology each day. Kazilek likes to say that “Dr. Biology is the smartest person I know.” However, he is quick to add that his persona’s enormous capacity for answers results from the participation of more than 100 volunteers in School of Life Sciences: professors, graduate students and undergraduates in science, graphic and scientific communication journalism. In fact, many of his co-workers have also found themselves immortalized in his comic book adventures.

If you ask Kazilek what is most valuable about the work that he’s doing, he’d tell you that Ask-a-Biologist puts information gathering in elementary, middle and high school students’ hands and “provides content that makes it easier and more fun for teachers to teach students.” The website has also led to the development of workshops for teachers. Kazilek, in collaboration with the Arizona Science Center, invigorates teachers’ science knowledge and their ability to produce creative content in their classrooms through his “Dr. Biology’s Imaginative Classroom.”

With more than twenty thousand questions answered, impacting education nationally and internationally, providing intriguing content to students, teachers and parents, and reminding us how science is part of most things that we love, the only question to be asked of Dr. Biology, or should we say, Charles Kazilek, is -

Sabine Deviche, an ASU undergraduate art major, is the key illustrator for “The Mysterious World of Dr. Biology.” Mastering the art of the comic book has proved to be an adventure of its own. Unlike illustrators of the past who used pencil and pen, her tools are a computer and a digital pen. “Just like great illustrators of the past, she is developing a style of her own,” says Kazilek, the live model for the character Dr. Biology. Deviche and Kazilek worked together to first produce a storyboard of scenes; these were then recreated with live subjects and captured with a digital camera. Deviche meticulously rendered these digital photographs into computerized creations true to comic book style. Lending her digital pen to a body of work, Deviche hopes, will soon help capture the imagination of students around the world though the Internet –

old school meets new school – Sabine Deviche discusses the finer points of animation with a classic Dr. Seuss character drawn by an anonymous artist on the Coor hall chalkboard in tempe campus.

Learning

BringingDr. Biologyto life

ZAAAAP!

Something

Strangeis happening...

What’s next?

12

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

13

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Goldstein’s Genetics: a Legacy of Inheritanceby Faye Farmer

Nothing strikes fear into a co-ed’s heart like the word “Genetics.” Add the word “Goldstein” just before it and you get a swirl of emotions tumbling out of any mid-semester life sciences student. Every undergraduate student in the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) must take genetics, BIO340. Chances are high that that student will take genetics from associate professor Elliott Goldstein, as he has been the primary instructor for the past 33 years. While there have been a few other instructors over the years, namely Kathleen Church, professor emerita in SOLS and former ASU Vice Provost, and Winifred Doane, professor emerita in SOLS, none have stood the test of time.

Goldstein believes that the course is challenging because it requires students to develop their skills in logic. Goldstein is very clear about the expectations he has for students and is familiar with the regular complaints: pickiness and consistency. He is confident that while the course is demanding, requires attention to detail, and a very specific use of terms in genetics, these attributes are all representative of what students must master in all their classes during their undergraduate years. Goldstein is responsible for writing and grading every exam he administers and will readily correct items he has mistakenly graded (which is not often). The exams are a mix of short essay, graphics, and definitions. The weekly homework assignments are developed and written by Goldstein, but graded by teaching assistants in the course. When students are discussing points on an exam with him, Goldstein will spend time listening patiently and follow up with a clear explanation of his position. A petitioner will leave the office feeling pleased, having had a rational conversation about a point of contention, and probably a little smarter, but possibly not with that argued point or two.

For those who have not taken Goldstein’s genetics course, here is a quick summary of the experience: Goldstein arrives in class with a stack of handwritten notes (used semester to semester and edited as the field advances). He sets the notes on the podium and starts lecturing promptly at 20 minutes before the hour. He uses a blackboard and chalk, which harkens back to a simpler time of instruction, but it is a method based on his own experience in his undergraduate genetics course. Drawing diagrams and illustrating a point not only clarifies understanding, but allows him to gauge and adjust the pace of his lecture.

Arriving at ASU from an MIT post-doctoral fellowship in 1974, where he studied protein synthesis in HeLa cells, a cancer cell line, Goldstein established an active research lab. His work has focused since on gene structure and control, using the popular model organism the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The genes he studies are the fly’s version of a pair of human cancer-causing genes.

Goldstein’s legacy extends further than a class and his research. For more than 15 years, he has been a forensic evidence consultant for court cases. He spent a few years working on evidence for the prosecution until the courts no longer required a Fry hearing for admissibility of DNA evidence. He then switched sides, now supporting the defense. His job is to declare whether the evidence has been soundly evaluated by laboratories, which then supports or refutes the conclusions on the data drawn by both sides. Specifically, he analyzes the statistical tests made on genetic matches. Considering that the first DNA profiling tests that were successfully used in a court conviction took place in 1987, Goldstein has been a part of the maturation of DNA evidence used in the justice system.

“I feel that my genetics training is now having a larger impact on society through this work, beyond the teaching of more than 300 students per year,” says Goldstein.

Goldstein has left a mark on several students’ educational experience (including mine), but almost no environmental mark on campus. He has cycled to ASU from his home every day he has worked at ASU, except in inclement weather. Several years ago, I had heard a rumor that he had been in a couple of accidents. Apparently, there have been four accidents. As he describes them, “two accidents got me to the emergency room; the first one resulted in a skull fracture and the loss of much of my sense of smell (it also got us our living room furniture.)” Please note that his wife made him purchase a helmet a few years back, and if you were wondering: none of the drivers were former students.

I was one of Goldstein’s former students, in graduate school. What I tell students as a Goldstein survivor and current advisor in the Undergraduate Student Services and Advising Office is what Goldstein would say himself: spend time on the course. He always has time for student questions and will approach each student with the respect she or he deserves. After 30 plus years at his job, he has seen and dealt with almost everything.

You’re wondering if I will comment further on my experience in Goldstein’s course? I’ll tell you what I tell students who visit me. I attended every class and took notes. I also taped every lecture and transcribed the tapes each week. I have a binder with three versions of notes in it. I had a study group with four other women, and we met almost weekly to review notes. In addition, I preferred his lecture style in many respects, when compared to other lecturers. Honestly, I struggled. And that’s all you get from me. So go take your genetics, everyone has to!

cOurSeS

Diving into more than genes…

besides his other skills, elliot goldstein is a certified rescue diver and underwater

photographer. he’s plunged into the depths near mexico, egypt, Dominican republic,

Cayman islands, bahamas, and Curaçao, in the antilles. his favorite trip so far: the red

Sea “which had the highest biodiversity, fish and invertebrates, as most of the areas

are protected national marine parks.” his next adventure: belize.

14

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

15

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Frank Turkowski: taking biology to the hills, to the public, and to sea.

DaviD e. broWN

I met Frank Turkowski at the 2005 fall dedication of the School of Life Sciences Natural History Collections. Frank, an accomplished photographer, had just taken a photo of his wife Ann, on the stairway of the old Life Science C Building where they first met in 1970. As we spoke I learned that he had attended ASU twice—as an undergraduate from 1957 to 1960, and as a Ph.D. Zoology student from 1963 and 1969.

Turkowski was a “home town boy,” having graduated from Phoenix High School and later, Phoenix College. After serving aboard the U.S.S. El Dorado in the U. S. Navy, he enrolled as an Arizona State college student under the G. I. Bill. Arizona State was a much different school then; the biology department was directed by Herbert Stahnke, a professor known as an expert on venomous creatures. Eager to upgrade the status of his Alma Mater, young Turkowski was one of a group of students and professors who circulated petitions to change the school’s name to Arizona State University—an upgrade vociferously objected to by several professors at the University of Arizona.

Turkowski worked his way through school by taking part time jobs that would provide the knowledge and experience needed for his education. He was the assistant curator of mammals on campus, and a research assistant for Hud Reynolds of the U. S. Forest Service. Upon graduation he went to work as an Animal Damage Control Agent with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After a stint at the University of Minnesota to learn animal radio-tracking, Turkowski returned to ASU to complete his

graduate studies. Much had changed in the interim, both on and off campus: Dr. Stahnke was gone, the “Hippie” movement was capturing the imagination of America’s youth, President Kennedy had been assassinated, and the colleges, including ASU, were increasingly subject to Vietnam War protests.

Turkowski, however, stuck to his graduate studies, preparing a dissertation on the life history of gray foxes and earning the nickname, “Foxy.” His study area was South Mountain Park. He would keep in shape by literally running his trap-line between classes.

On receiving his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1969, Turkowski became the director of education and research at the new Phoenix Zoo in nearby Papago Park. Here he managed natural history education programs, studied the endangered Arabian oryx herd, and coordinated cooperative projects with the ASU zoology and psychology departments. It was in this capacity that he hired two part-time assistants, one an education major named Ann Chilton, who became his wife in 1973 and the mother of his daughter Julie and sons, Brian and Keith.

One of Turkowski’s research goals in the 1970s and 1980s was to make animal damage control activities more selective while protecting non-target species. In 1972, as a wildlife research biologist with the U. S. Forest Service, he studied small carnivores. Some of his research efforts involved documenting the food habits of small carnivores, manipulating carnivore and rodent habitats, and determining the diet of desert cottontails. In 1975, he moved to

Uvalde, Texas, taking a research position with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Texas A&M University Research and Extension Center. There he examined the effects of habitat manipulations on small mammals until he retired from that agency in 1983.

Since leaving the Service, Frank has been a writer, a photographer, and the co-owner of a private school. Teaching, travel and the Navy have also held an attraction, and he has been an adjunct professor of biology and psychology in a cooperative program with Central Texas College and the U. S. Navy since 1997. As a professor with the Navy’s Program for Afloat Education, he has taught on two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, three destroyers, two frigates, and two personnel landing ships. While teaching courses on the USS Ashland in Aqaba, Jordon, terrorists fired several rockets at his docked ship but missed.

Frank continues to live with Ann in Uvalde. Here he writes both popular and technical works and pursues a wide variety of interests. Among his more than 70 publications, he has penned a half-dozen nature poems, and more than 100 of his photos have appeared on post cards, in books, on calendars, and even in buildings. His most recent effort is a 411-page book entitled Coyotes, Trappers, Sheepherders and Urbanites, which includes many of his memories as an Animal Damage Control Biologist in Arizona. Copies of this book are available for $27.70 at P. O. Box 1832, Uvalde, Texas 78802. As for the reason for his successful career, he says that it was the well rounded zoological expertise that he acquired at ASU that has served him so well.

aLumniaLumni

16

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

17

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

CARSEF winner’s future takes flight, with crickets, spiders, and life sciences’ mentoring.

by Kate ihle

Kevin McCluney knows what a difference one person can make. Even the quote by Helen Keller that accompanies his email highlights how important this philosophy is in his life: “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.”

A doctoral student in the laboratory of John Sabo, assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences, McCluney is an ecologist investigating the role of water availability on animal community structure. It is a career choice that might never have taken shape.

Growing up in Cocoa, Florida, McCluney often had to make his own opportunities to explore his interest in biology. It wasn’t until a summer program for high school students was started and run by James Yount, a professor from the local community college, that McCluney had his first exposure to the study of ecology and his first understanding of the difference that mentorship can make.

“Up until then I didn’t know anyone with formal training in biology or ecology. My world came alive during that special class,” McCluney remembers.

Like his first ecology mentor, McCluney has made education and community outreach a priority during his graduate career. For the past two years, he has volunteered as a graduate mentor in the Southwest Center for Education and the Natural Environment’s (SCENE) Research Experiences for High School Students program.

SCENE is a non-profit organization administered out of the Global Institute of Sustainability that fosters bridges between the research programs of Arizona State University and the community. Each year, SCENE pairs exceptional high school students with mentors in research labs at ASU. SCENE’s students first learn the basics of experimental design, data analysis, and research methods before working with mentors to design an original research project to be presented at the Central Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair (CARSEF).

This year, one of McCluney’s students, Puja Umaretiya, a senior from Chandler High School, won the Senior Division Grand Award at CARSEF.

“SCENE students are amazing: really intelligent, dedicated,” says McCluney. “But also young.” For many of them, the SCENE program is the first time that they are asked to be truly responsible for an independent project. While each of his students chose to do projects related to McCluney’s research, he is quick to say that their project ideas are “surprising and original,” ranging from the effect of water availability on the frequency of cricket calling to rates of cricket predation by wolf spiders.

McCluney has seen what he describes as an “awakening” in his students: “You see them growing up and coming into their own thoughts about how the world works and their place in it.”

Many students in the SCENE program are exposed to nature first hand for the first time. Although McCluney’s charges have grown up in a desert city, most had never been directly confronted with the issues of water availability and sustainability at the heart of McCluney’s research. For

these students, their introduction to ecology comes through interactions with their new study organisms: crickets and spiders.

At first, students are a little jumpy and nervous around their many-legged subjects, but quickly get used to them. According to McCluney, part of the students’ growth as scientists is discovering that “bugs are not icky or disgusting. They can be really cool.” In fact, McCluney says after two years in the lab that “Puja is probably less nervous around the spiders than I am.”

Learning to love their study organisms is just one step in a long process through which mentors like McCluney guide their students. “There’s lots of effort in drawing students into the research. They need to do background reading, get used to being in lab, and learn about experimental design before the understanding is there to come up with a really cool experiment,” McCluney says.

Students eventually learn that even small research projects have their challenges. Those who come back for second and third years, like Umaretiya, begin at a higher level, developing projects that are more original and intricate. Regardless of their place in the program, SCENE students are impressed with the dedication and care that scientific research demands, and, according to McCluney, most students rise to the challenge.

In fact, one of Kevin’s students was so dedicated that after problems kept him from getting solid results from his project before CARSEF, he returned to the lab for the summer. This time, with more experience, his study went smoothly. He and McCluney are in the process of submitting his results for publication.

mentOringmentOring

18

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

19

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

During Umaretiya’s second year of the SCENE program, she built on the training and experience gained with McCluney the previous year to set up her award winning project - a complex, original study examining the effect of cricket hydration levels on rates of cricket predation by wolf spiders. Using ideas drawn from Ecological Stoichiometry, a text co-authored by Robert Sterner and School of Life Sciences’ professor James Elser, McCluney and Umaretiya developed a design that maximized results and statistical power, within the confines of Puja’s schedule. Over the course of three weekends, Puja examined the effect that water could have as a limiting resource in the context of prey consumption at low hydration, as well as a quenching effect at higher levels of hydration.

This sophisticated experimental design is one of the greatest strengths of the project, according to McCluney. Umaretiya found that spider consumption of crickets is maximal at intermediate levels of hydration, with rates of consumption lower at very high and very low levels of cricket hydration. The resulting curve suggests that there are trade-offs between the effort involved in catching crickets and the resulting hydration payoff.

Umaretiya’s project not only earned her the Grand Award in the Senior Division at CARSEF, but also first place in the Animal Sciences division, the United States Navy Naval Science Award, and the United States Army Award. In addition, both McCluney and Umaretiya received congratulatory notes from ASU President Michael M. Crow. Umaretiya advanced to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in Albuquerque, New Mexico in May.

The ISEF hosts nearly 1,500 students from more than 40 countries with a grand prize of a $50,000 scholarship. There she won third place in her division and garnered a second U.S. Army award, but of her ISEF experience, Umaretiya says the highlight was meeting people from around the world and seeing the type of research that they do: “ISEF does this thing where all the participants exchange pins with people from other places, so I got to collect pins from countries like Japan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, etc.” She was also one of thirty-six students selected to have lunch with a group of Nobel laureates, a “once in a lifetime experience.”

Umaretiya and McCluney will begin writing up her results for publication this summer. Next year, she will head to college. With her impressive history, Umaretiya has already been accepted to several top universities. She plans to pursue a career in medicine.

Next year, McCluney plans to continue his role as a SCENE mentor. His personal philosophy of doing what he can when he can fits well with President Crow’s vision of ASU as a force of empowerment in the larger community. While McCluney’s work with the SCENE program builds on the future of ASU as the New American University, his commitment to building the next generation of scientists continues the legacy of personal involvement modeled by McCluney’s first ecology mentor back in Cocoa, Florida.

Behind the Scenes: The Clinical Laboratory Sciences Program

by Faye Farmer

Coming soon to a classroom near you: leukoerythroblastic anemia! Read those last two words aloud. Go ahead, I dare you. Now, imagine listening to hundreds of words just as difficult to pronounce for sixteen months – and then knowing what each of them means! Students who have been admitted into the Clinical Laboratory Sciences (CLS) program in the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) at Arizona State University (ASU) spend three hours each morning listening to one of four faculty members in the program lecture on diseases that are particularly difficult to sound out, let alone diagnose.

Diana Mass is one such faculty member. She teaches hematology. I am sitting and scribbling notes in a corner of the lecture room, watching a diverse group of students, half of whom are in scrubs, stare intently at Mass as she reviews etiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of specific blood disorders. I find it strange that a beguiling soft, southern accent has lured me into this horribly graphic world of disease. On this occasion, Mass is covering diseases of hemopoiesis, problems in the production of blood cells. She covers three diseases in thirty minutes, while, ironically, it takes me thirty minutes to sound out the word leukoerythroblastic. It is clear that I am surrounded by only the determined and dedicated.

Mass, director of CLS, is joined by clinical professors Catherine Downs, Lauren Roberts and Mary Anne Lefevre in the teaching and administration of the program. Downs teaches clinical chemistry and urinalysis and is also responsible for student advisement and coordination of student rotations. Roberts teaches clinical microbiology and immunology, along with a microbiology course, MIC 380: Medical Parasitology. Lefevre completes the heady group, teaching clinical chemistry and coordinating immunohematology. All of the faculty members teach to their own sub-discipline, remain current in the field and contribute to the continued improvement of the curriculum. The CLS program is accredited through the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences and is the only program of its kind in the state of Arizona. In order to be accepted into the CLS program, students must have a minimum 2.5 GPA, reference letters, and participate in a personal interview with the faculty. CLS students go on to complete two and one half years of general studies, college, and other pre-requisite science requirements, culminating in a detailed application process. Mass and Roberts echo one another when they describe the typical CLS student: mature, flexible, academic, task driven. They also know how to describe the graduates: professional, passionate, caring, experts.

PrOgramSmentOring

From left to right: mary anne lefevre, Diana mass, Catherine Downs and lauren robertsPhoto of Puja and Kevin in the Sabo laboratory

taken by Patricia Cavagnaro.

20

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

21

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

ASU has offered a degree in clinical laboratory sciences, formerly known as medical technology, for over 50 years. Graduates of this program, accredited at ASU since 1983, are eligible to take a national medical technologist certification exam. Once certified, they usually work in various departments in clinical laboratories: blood banks or hematology, chemistry, immunology, and microbiology. As clinical professionals, they work behind the scenes to perform laboratory tests to aid in the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of disease. Their work enables the early detection of health risks and disease and improves treatment and disease management, while decreasing subsequent health problems and related costs. A medical technologist’s findings can influence as much as 60-70% of medical decisions. They may also contribute to the success of crime laboratories, fertility treatment clinics, organ transplantation teams, and food product development. The CLS program has a 100% employment rate for its graduates, with many students offered positions prior to their official graduation from the university. Graduates typically have to choose between competing offers they receive from prospective employers.

As a major, CLS keeps a low profile within SOLS, but recently clinical laboratory scientists are making headlines - literally. In April of 2006, the Arizona Republic touted the CLS program, the discipline, and examined the predicted labor force shortage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 60-69% deficit in specialized/certified clinical laboratory personnel is predicted through 2012. The article also profiled Mass’ ability to solicit additional funding from the regional healthcare industry to expand the program at ASU in response to increased professional demand. Mass’ efforts continue today, with the hopes of expanding each year.

Courses in the CLS program are small and intense, with 26 students in this year’s program (up from 16 last year). After lecture each morning, students spend up to four hours completing laboratory exercises that bring to life what they have been examining in lecture. There are weekly exams, laboratory reports, case studies, and literature

reviews throughout the year. The strain of this workload is not evident as students file into the laboratory adorned with close-toed shoes, lab coats and smiles. These students want to be here, they are enthusiastic and motivated. They are encouraged to not only know their way around a microscope; they are also asked to develop their professional skill set. This includes dressing and behaving appropriately in a healthcare and laboratory environment. These laboratory sessions on campus help students prepare not only for the science of a clinical lab, but for the work environment as well. The CLS curriculum also includes courses in administration and education to prepare students for supervisory roles in management and training.

Clinical rotations represent the pinnacle of the program, where the confluence of education, experience and professionalism meet. Laboratory settings for rotations are within hospitals, clinics and private laboratories. The clinical rotations encompass all the disciplines in the curriculum. The program is affiliated with more than 20 institutions in the Phoenix area, as well as Tucson and Casa Grande. Through legal agreements between the program and work sites, students are able to practice side by side with medical technologists, honing their skills as “real” medical technologists and testing actual patient specimens. This hands on approach to learning improves students’ marketability and contributes to their employability at graduation.

While it seems that CLS faculty reside in the same kind of “behind the drape” situation as real life medical technologists occupy in a hospital (somewhat resembling Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz), the comparison stops there. Unlike Oz, these unassuming women are a force to be reckoned with in terms of education, experience and tenure at ASU. Mass and Downs have been a part of the CLS program from its early days. Mass joined the program in 1970 and Downs in 1973, before CLS was at ASU and was housed in what is now Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center. With a combined total of 120 years of teaching and professional experience and hundreds of graduates, the CLS program and its faculty are certainly a gem within the crown jewels of SOLS: a gem, worthy of bringing out from behind the scenes.

Chances are if you are new graduate student in the School of Life Sciences, one of the first people you’ll meet is Karly Green, an administrative assistant in SOLS’ Graduate Programs office. Her job consists of some heavy lifting: assisting with roster grading and the graduate class schedule, placing teacher assistants in classes during the summer sessions, and many other tasks. However, it’s in the evenings that Karly trains with real weights, working her muscles to peak condition – fit for a professional bodybuilder.

“I always knew I would be a bodybuilder,” Green, 28, says. She became inspired in the early 1990s when she watched Lenda Murray compete for the Ms. Olympia contests on television. Murray dominated the sport, winning six consecutive Ms. Olympia titles and an additional two Olympia titles in 2002 and 2003. While attending one of Murray’s competitions, Green met Lenda. Green confesses that she became tongue tied: “I just remember telling her that she was beautiful.”

Always physically active, Green started taking weight-lifting seriously when she was a senior in high school. She ran track throughout high school and college, and took a B.S. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, in health and physical education. But it was while student-teaching at a high school (during her senior year of college), that the football coach, also a bodybuilding judge, suggested that Green try out for a bodybuilding competition that was to be held a few weeks later.

“I’m not sure why he suggested that I compete. I was wearing a suit the day we met,” Green says. Perhaps he saw the shape of things to come, for while Green didn’t train for that event, she did attend and was inspired. She started to train with her eye on another competition five weeks later. Green won. She immediately signed up for another show – in addition to starting her master’s program in physical education at Virginia Tech. and working. It was while she was a graduate assistant with one of the academic enrichment programs at Virginia Tech, that Green realized two things: how much she liked working and interacting with the college community and students, and that bodybuilding was destined to be more than a hobby. She won her second bodybuilding show – which entitled her to carry a pro-card and took her into the sphere of professional competition.

Within two years of discovering bodybuilding, Green competed in four shows. In 2005, she entered three, winning one, placing 2nd and 3rd, as well as taking an award for “Best Poser,” a title that comes with competitive stature and a cash prize.

As she’s matured as a bodybuilder, Green has become an expert in competition procedures, as well as the training process; prepping for a show means filling out the appropriate forms and taking a polygraph exam or urinalysis screening to meet the eligibility requirements. In natural bodybuilding, competitors are banned from using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, or any other substances listed by the federation.

The Anatomy of a Bodybuilderby raChel hayeS

Staff awareneSSPrOgramS

Karly green showing off her championship form. Photo by hot Shots Photography.

Leu • ko • eryth • ro • blas • ticAne • mia!

22

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

23

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

Staff awareneSS

Of Whiteflys and Men: How insect study led to saving lives

by elizabeth W. DaviDSoN

Twelve years ago, what started as a casual conversation during a field trip to Papago Park with Brad Segura - a lively, precocious undergraduate student in an invertebrate zoology class - became an invitation to work in my laboratory dissecting very tiny insects and following their digestive tracts under a microscope. Now many years later, a long telephone conversation with him has made it clear that teaching and mentoring of undergraduates can critically shape their life choices.

Segura grew up in a military family, and lived in six different states and three communities in Germany before graduating from high school. He came to ASU at the suggestion of his uncle, Dr. Carlos Vallejo, a professor in the ASU College of Education. Segura always had medicine as a career goal, and came to ASU assuming he would eventually become a physician. However, once here at ASU he discovered that he didn’t really quite know what he was interested in or where he wanted to go with his life. Two things set him on a firmer path - falling in love with Marnie, whom he met through Campus Crusade for Christ, and reading the course description for invertebrate zoology.

Segura had loved insects early in his life. But what was important about this course was that the field trip to Papago Park (and the research with whiteflies that followed) revealed that science could really be fun. The research, funded through the Life Sciences Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in its inaugural year, also led to a publication of his work. According to Segura, these undergraduate experiences were pivotal in his decision to apply for medical school and - once he was in the University of Michigan program - to also apply for the doctoral program in the department of physiology. The two degrees made it possible for him to do research as well as practice medicine.

Segura’s four years of medical school further cultivated his love for the digestive tract. He ultimately chose a career in pediatric general surgery, with aspirations to specialize in gastrointestinal disorders. This work, in combination with four years of Ph.D. research on the enteric nervous system, and four years in residency in general surgery have placed Segura as a Chief Resident in general surgery at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He routinely works 12-hr shifts, but away from work: it’s all about family.

The Seguras married in 1992 while both were still students at ASU. They now have four children, Luke, Olivia, Gabriel, and Kelly. In spite of Segura’s demanding work schedule, his children are frequent participants (“helpers” as they are known to his patients) when he makes rounds at the hospital. When he finishes his chief residency, they will move to Pittsburgh, PA where he will take up a two-year pediatric surgery fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital. His career goal is to achieve an academic position at a university medical school; doing research, teaching, and practicing surgery in children – from the neonate and those still in the womb to the adolescent. Interestingly, nearly every time he was interviewed for a position - in medical school, graduate school, surgical residency, or pediatric surgery fellowship - it was the whitefly publication that became a topic of conversation: “What were you doing working with whiteflies?”

It is indeed a long way from the trails of Papago Park, to the digestive tracts of whiteflies, to pediatric surgery. But, as Segura would attest, it was the diversity of experiences that undergraduate research created that offered new perspectives and opened doors to new realms of possibility.

aLumni

Green’s Winning natural

bodybuilding formula

Monday- Glutes,

Hamstrings, Calves

Tuesday- biceps &

triceps, abdominals

Wednesday- reST

Thursday- shoulders,

abdominals

Friday- legs (includes

glutes & calves

as well)

Saturday- back

sunday- Chest,

abdominals

Competitions begin with all of the contestants, in their appropriate weight or height class, on stage performing mandatory poses such as “Front Double Biceps, Side Chest, or the Hamstring Curl” for the judges. The judges may change the order of the line up, ask to see certain competitors together, and ask to see certain poses again at any time during group comparisons. This portion of the show, also known as “Pre-judging,” ends once the judges are finished scoring all competitors.

Finally, in the evening, there are posing routines. Each competitor performs a 60 second posing routine to music of her choice. The goal is to perform poses to the rhythm of the music. When Green won “Best Poser” in 2005, she used an old 1970’s song: “She’s a Bad Mama Jama.” She said the slow beat allowed her to hold her poses longer, and it was a song the crowd could get into.

To get the shape she needs, Green says she works out five to six times a week for one to one and a half hours at a time. “When I’m getting ready for a show, I’ll work out twice a day,” Green adds.

Twelve weeks before a competition she begins to “diet down.” Green puts herself on a special blend of lean proteins, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates. The goal: build muscle, shed fat.

One misconception that the public has about bodybuilders is about their eating habits. Green says, “People hear ‘dieting’ and they automatically think that I’m starving myself or depriving

myself of ‘good food.’” She notes that a good body building diet needs to follow some rules.

“I eat about every two and a half to three hours, which comes out to eating about six or seven times a day - probably a lot more than most people eat,” Green says, and

that “every meal should have the correct ratios of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats.”

Green feels that she is someone who can teach something to those she comes in contact with: “I believe that sports for females and males are a vital

key to helping people figure out who they are. I get a huge sense of accomplishment from this sport. Bodybuilding is about taking your

physique and manipulating and transforming it into something better than it was before.”

Green hopes too that she’s proof to young women that “you can be and do

anything that your heart desires no matter what people think.”

Certainly for members of School of Life Sciences, Green

illustrates that following a dream and working hard,

one can rise to become his or her own superhero.

awarDS anD recOgnitiOnSawarDS anD recOgnitiOnS

Associate professor Ann Kinzig/others at ASU were chosen by the MacArthur Foundation to fund a program of study around “advancing conservation in a social context.” The $4.3 million award will go toward building a “global research-network to examine the trade-off inherent in conservation.”

Tsafrir Mor, assistant professor in SOLS and researcher in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, Biodesign Institute at ASU, was awarded a $2.6 million grant by the Department of Defense – Army Medical Research & Material Command (shared with bioengineer Jieping Ye) to examine “Rapid and Large Scale Plant-based Production of Catalytic Nerve-Agent Bioscavengers.”

Professor Manfred Laubichler received a CAREER award from National Science Foundation for $439, 324 over five years. His work will center on the topic of “twentieth century theories of development in context,” which will partner with his and Jane Maienschein’s collaborative research, the Embryo Project.

Julian Chen, assistant professor with a joint appointment in SOLS and Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has received a CAREER award from NSF to study telomerase. His lab will receive $674,000 over five years.

Associate professor Tatiana P. Ugarova and her SOLS team (Lishko,Valeryi; Mishchuk,Darya; Podolnikova,Nataly) were awarded $613,936 by the HHS-NIH-NHLBI-National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute to investigate “recognition of fibrinogen by leukocyte integrins.”

Professor Wayne Frasch has received an award from Department of Defense - Air Force Office of Scientific Research to examine the “construction of a DNA computer to solve NP-Complete problems” in the amount of $557,500 over two years.

Carsten Duch, assistant professor, and Sharon Crook, assistant professor in SOLS and Department of Mathematics and Statistics, were awarded a grant for $457, 654 from the National Science Foundation to examine “behaviourally relevant neuronal modification during postembryonic development.”

Juergen Gadau, assistant professor, was awarded more than $400,000 by the National Institutes of Health to develop a new insect model system, utilizing Nasonia, a parasitoid wasp, to study how the interactions between nuclear and mitochondrial encoded genes contribute to human mitochondrial disease, apoptosis and aging.

Charles Arntzen, professor, Hugh Mason, associate professor, Tsafrir Mor, assistant professor, of SOLS and researchers in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, Biodesign Institute at ASU, were awarded $366,080 in funds by the National Institute of Health for instrumental instrumentation.

Professor Ferran Garcia-Pichel has been selected by the USDA/CREES (Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service) to receive a National Research Initiative (NRI) Competitive Grants Program Award from the Soil Processes Program. His grant for $365,000, entitled “functional constraints in microscale carbon and nitrogen cycling in biological soil crusts,” will examine elemental cycling with a combination of microbiological, micro-chemical, molecular and soil science techniques to attain a mechanistic and predictive understanding of their clockwork.

Colin Brent, assistant research professor, and Juergen Liebig, assistant professor, have received $350,000 from USDA for three years to study pheromonal regulation of reproduction in termites.

Daniel Sarewitz, professor in the School of Life Sciences and director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, was awarded $200,000 for a two-year project to advance policy for sustainability from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.

Professor Jon Harrison has been awarded $167,393 in funds from the Department of Defense in coordination with the University of Michigan to research “synthetic vertebral implant for cyborg insects.”

Professors Willem Vermaas, Wayne Frasch, and Sudhir Kumar, and associate professor Valerie Stout, have been selected to receive grants from Science Foundation Arizona. Vermaas will study the “function and metabolism of carotenoids in cyanobacteria.” Stout’s award will examine “toxin regulation in a mushroom pathogen.” Frasch’s work centers on the development of a molecular diagnostic system for ultra-rapid identification of nucleic acid sequences with single base specificity. Kumar is the director of the Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics, Biodesign Institute at ASU. His work will focus on the “bioinformatics of assembling the timescale of life.” SFAz grants are one-year awards.

Andy Holycross, assistant research professor, received the only ASU grant from the Arizona Game & Fish (out of 19 total grant awards in AZ) from the state’s Heritage Fund. He will receive $30,000 from Arizona Game & Fish for the project “Narrow-headed garter snake population genetics.”

Faculty Grant Awards

ann Kinzig tsafrir mor

manfred laubichler Jane maienschein

Julian Chen tatiana P. ugarova

Wayne Frasch Carsten Duch

Sharon Crook Juergen gadau

Charles arntzen hugh mason

Ferran garcia-Pichel Colin brent

Juergen liebig Daniel Sarewitz

Jon harrison Willem vermaas

Sudhir Kumar valerie Stout

andy holycross

24

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

25

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

awarDS anD recOgnitiOnSawarDS anD recOgnitiOnS

The National Science Foundation selected School of Life Sciences’ graduate students John Benedict and Jason Walker to attend the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI). Benedict and Walker spent approximately eight weeks in Japan and South Korea, respectively, over summer recess. Benedict, who studies with associate professor Kathleen Pigg, worked in the laboratory of Harufumi Nishida, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan. Benedict collected fossil plants of the Miocene age (12 million years old) from central Hokkaido and conducted studies with a variety of techniques, including CT-Scan. Walker, who studies with professor John Briggs, worked in partnership with the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF). The EAPSI program is designed to provide the opportunity for graduate students in science and engineering to work in a host research laboratory and to develop collaborations with international colleagues.

The first Frontiers in Life Sciences Conference Award was given to SOLS doctoral students Mike Butler, Lisa Taylor, Melissa Meadows, and Matthew Toomey of assistant professor Kevin McGraw’s group and Nathan Morehouse and Jonathon Douglas of professor Ron Rutowski’s laboratory. The $29,000 in funds will be used to develop the first SOLS Frontiers in Life Sciences Conference to be held at ASU. The winning proposal, “Iridescence: more than meets the eye,” was chosen for its innovative approach, cutting edge research and speakers, and community outreach. Singular for its student-driven nature, this international conference will provide

opportunities to ASU and visiting graduate students for close interactions with globally recognized speakers in nanotechnology, material sciences, biology and education. The conference, sponsored by the School of Life Sciences, will be staged in February 2008 and will include a range of activities: research symposia, plenary talks from invited speakers, and poster sessions along with public exhibitions involving dance and fashion in collaboration with artists from the Herberger College of the Arts. The Frontiers in Life Sciences Conference Series occurs annually and is meant to showcase the interdisciplinary research of SOLS students and faculty and to connect that work with that of colleagues within and beyond ASU. The Conference also seeks to communicate the excitement of new discovery to students and the general public. For more information: http://sols.asu.edu/rti/frontiers/index.php

Doctoral student Frank Farruggia (of associate professor Martin Wojciechowski’s lab), Brad Butterfield (of professor John Briggs lab) and Witt Taylor (of associate professor Kathleen Pigg’s lab) have been named to ASU’s Preparing Future Faculty Program (pFF). The program is a professional development program “designed to prepare graduate students for the multiple roles they will play as faculty members.” One of the first of five such programs in the U.S., the pFF program at ASU was developed in collaboration with the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the Council of Graduate Schools, with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Now with institutional support, ASU’s pFF program still serves as a model for other PFF programs across the nation.

Aimee Kessler, a doctoral student who works with Andrew Smith, Parents Professor and Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs, was awarded a Microwave Telemetry, Inc. Satellite/GPS Transmitter Award. Microwave Telemetry, Inc., a manufacturer of satellite data transmitters gave Kessler four solar powered GPS transmitters valued in excess of $16,000 for use in her research with endangered Great Bustards, (Otis tarda), a large hawk-like raptor in Mongolia. The transmitters will be used by Kessler in conjunction with an education program for rural schoolchildren in Mongolia.

Angela Picco, a doctoral student with James Collins, Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and Environment and assistant director for biological sciences with the National Science Foundation, received the Stoye Award given by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. This award, which recognizes the best student oral presentation in conservation biology at the annual meeting, is the most prestigious student award given by the society. According to Collins, previous winners are a veritable who’s who in herpetology (http://www.asih.org/stst)

Gro Amdam, assistant professor in SOLS and with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, was named “Young Outstanding Scientist” by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The $1.6 million (current exchange rate) in funds will support her continued characterization of the genetic and physiological basis of the pollen hoarding behavioral syndrome of honey bees, one of the best studied and understood behavioral traits in behavioral biology. Amdam a also awarded a Pew Scholarship in Biomedical Sciences in the amount of $250,000 for a four-year period. This is the first year The Pew Foundation has invited ASU to nominate. Through a nomination process within ASU, Dr. Amdam was chosen to represent ASU as the sole nominee.

Professor Jingle Wu was selected for the AAAS Award for International Cooperation.

He was recognized for “his pioneering efforts and contributions to sustainability science, career-long involvement with landscape ecological research in China and training and mentoring of young scholars.”

Roy Curtiss III, professor in SOLS and director of the Center of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the Biodesign Institute at ASU, was named “Bioscience Researcher of the Year” by the Arizona BioIndustry Association.

Foundation Professor and director of SOLS Robert Page and professor Manfred Laubichler were offered fellowships for 2009-2010 at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Studies) in Berlin. They will convene a year long working group on Social Insects as Models for Evo-Devo.

Graduate Students Awards & Honors (From A Selection Of 46 Awards):

John benedict Jason Walker

mike butler lisa taylor

melissa meadows matthew toomey

Nathan morehouse Frank Farruggia

brad butterfield Witt taylor

aimee Kessler angela Picco

Honors & Awards

gro amdam Jingle Wu

roy Curtiss iii robert Page

26

SOLS

200

7 | v

olu

me

3 N

o. 2

27

SOLS 2007 | vo

lume 3 N

o. 2

AwArds And recognitionsAwArds And recognitions

Charles Arntzen, professor in SOLS and researcher in the Center of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, Biodesign Institute at ASU has been selected to receive the Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists for 2007, the inaugural year for this award. This award is granted in recognition of distinguished and long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the Society by current members in areas that include research, education, mentoring, outreach and professional and public service. Current members of the ASPB who have contributed to the Society for at least 10 years are eligible for nomination. Recipients of the Fellow of ASPB honor, which may be granted to no more than 0.2% of the current membership each year, receive a certificate of distinction and a lapel pin. He will be recognized at the ASPB annual awards ceremony in Chicago on July 7th.

Leah Gerber, associate professor, and Manfred Laubichler, professor, were chosen by ASU President Michael M. Crow to be ASU Faculty Exemplars.

Manfred Laubichler, professor, has been selected to receive the ASU Faculty Achievement Award in Young Investigator, Research for 2007.

Valerie Stout, associate professor, was chosen to receive the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award.

Jennifer Fewell, associate professor in SOLS and co-director of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, was recognized by the ASU Intergroup Relations Center and awarded the Patricia Gurin Scholar and Activist Award. This award is given annually “to a faculty member who has consistently

and significantly demonstrated a commitment to and action on scholar-activism in intergroup relations.” Fewell was recognized for her work with MARC (Minority Access to Research Careers) program in SOLS which is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

2007’s Arizona Technology Enterprises awards winners were announced and include: Roy Curtiss III, professor in SOLS and researcher in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, Biodesign Institute at ASU received Most Patents Disclosed Award;Kathryn Sykes, assistant professor in SOLS and researcher in the Center for Innovations in Medicine, Biodesign Institute at ASU, garnered New Innovator of the Year Award;Willem Vermaas, professor in SOLS, was awarded Innovator of the Year Award: Health Science Ventures.

Research by James Elser, professor in SOLS, and ASU astrobiologist Jack Farmer, with the leadership of UNAM biologist Valeria Souza at the hot springs site of Cuatro Cienegas in Mexico, has resulted in visible, substantive change in environmental policy in Mexico. As a result of their work (and others), in his February 25, 2007 speech, the President of Mexico Felipe Calderon called for regulations to protect the aquifer beneath the Hundido Valley (a large agricultural area) adjacent Cuatro Cienegas protected area.

David Capco, professor, was chosen to receive to receive the ASU Council of Academic Advisors (CAA) award for Advising Support –Non Advising Faculty.

Wendi Simonson, administrative assistant with SOLS Undergraduate Student Services and Academic Advising Office, was chosen to receive the ASU Council of Academic Advisors (CAA) award for Advising Support –Advising Office.

SOLS podcasts Ask-a-Biologist, created and hosted by Charles Kazilek, director of technology integration & outreach for SOLS, and Science Studio created and hosted by Margaret Coulombe, media relations coordinator and managing editor of the SOLS Magazine, were selected to represent the best at ASU by Apple Corp for the launch of iTunesU. Ask-a-Biologist’s children’s educational podcast rose to iTunes U Top 10 list of downloads (#6). Science Studio was highlighted, along with podcasts produced by Stanford, MIT, and Duke University, and captured the #4 slot. AAB podcast website:http://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcastsSOLS podcast website:http://sols.asu.edu/podcasts

New Faculty:Roberto Gaxiola, assistant professor, in the Molecular and Cell Biology Faculty Group

New Staff:Rosie Bradley, Coordinator, Business OfficeTina Chan, Accounts Coordinator, Business OfficeElaine Finke, Coordinator, Administration and Faculties OfficeKarly Green, Administrative Assistant, Graduate Program OfficeAriel Jones, Administrative Assistant, SOLUR programTracy Thornton, Specialist, Administration and Faculties OfficeFidel Torres, Academic Specialist Coordinator (advisor), Undergraduate Student Services OfficeShelli Veal, Academic Specialist Coordinator (advisor), Undergraduate Student Services Office

Charles Arntzen Wendi SimonsonLeah Gerber Charles Kazilek

Jennifer Fewell Margaret CoulombeKathryn Sykes Roberto Gaxiola

James Elser David Capco Tina ChanRosie Bradley

Elaine Finke Karly Green

Ariel Jones Tracy Thornton

Fidel Torres Shelli Veal

Honors & Awards

October 5, 2007 and November 29, 2007In October, Arizona Science Center (http://www.azscience.org) will exhibit a selection of Robby Roberson’s photographs from his show, “The World Within.” Roberson is an associate professor of cell biology and bioimaging. This show is in conjunction with Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition: seeing the Unseen: Photographs by Harold E. Edgerton that runs September 15 – December 30, 2007. Edgerton pioneered such advanced photographic techniques as stroboscopy and ultra-high-speed photography. Roberson will lecture and conduct a demonstration at SMOCA at 6:30 p.m. on November 29, 2007 with discussion about the science behind Edgerton’s effects, and the use of and advances in bioimaging. For information: http://www.smoca.org

October 10, 2007School of Life Sciences Career, Internship and Graduate School Fair10 a.m. – 2 p.m.Life Sciences C-wingContact: SOLS’ Undergraduate Advising, (480) 727-6277

For information on upcoming news and events:http://sols.asu.edu/sols_newshttp://sols.asu.edu/events

SOLS EVENTS

28

soLs

200

7 | V

oLu

ME

3 N

o. 2

Contact us!if you have information to include in this newsletter, please contact us at SolS@asu.edu. We are particularly interested in reconnecting with alumni and emeriti. manuscripts should be less than 1000 words, photos should be high resolution, and all submissions should include all pertinent contact information. Submissions should be sent to managing editor, Margaret (Peggy) Coulombe, margaret.coulombe@asu.edu, attention SolS Newsletter, P.o. box 874501, tempe, arizona, 85287-4501. http://sols.asu.edu/events/newsletter_sign_up.php

if you are interested in learning about the many ways you can contribute to the School of life Sciences and aSu please visit the aSu Foundation web site. https://secure.asufoundation.org/giving

We reserve the right to edit all submissions. © 2007 aSu School of life Sciences. School of life Sciences is part of the College of liberal arts & Sciences at arizona State university. http://sols.asu.edu

Inside the Outer World: Phoenix Flora

An archival sheet from the ASU Herbarium collection documenting the cactus Opuntia bigelovii Engelmann, prepared by Donald Pinkava, professor emeritus. Each piece represents a multimedia effort, combining photography, pen and ink drawing of chromosomes, pressed samples of plant parts, flowers, fruit and seeds mounted on paper. The materials were collected in Pinal County in 1983.

The World Within: The Fungal Body

Cells of the common mold Neurospora crassa viewed in a frozen-hydrated state with a cryo-scanning electron microscope. Most fungi are made up of tube-like cells called hyphae. Hyphae grow, branch, and divide giving rise to a complex network of cells, i.e., the fungal body or mycelium. Image by Robby Roberson. See inside back cover for more information about his upcoming exhibition.

ObservatiOns