News

Doctor of Philosophy students who passed their candidacy exams in the last year received their white coats at the Graduate School Research Induction Ceremony. Students from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department who received their white coats were Clara Stiefel and Jessica Kelliher, both mentored by Justin Leung, Ph.D., Matthew Thompson, mentored by Alicia Byrd, Ph.D., Haven Griffin, mentored by Giulia Baldini, M.D., Ph.D., and Jake Edmonson, mentored by Alan Tackett, Ph.D. and Brian Koss, Ph.D. Congratulations to all!

Similar 5F-APINACA Metabolism between CD-1 Mouse and Human Liver Microsomes Involves Different P450 Cytochromes.
Crosby SV, Ahmed IY, Osborn LR, Wang Z, Schleiff MA, Fantegrossi WE, Nagar S, Prather PL, Boysen G, Miller GP.
Metabolites.

Monitoring helicase-catalyzed unwinding of multiple duplexes simultaneously.
Thompson MD, Malone EG, Byrd AK.
Methods Enzymol.

Alignment of helicases on single-stranded DNA increases activity.
Ozaslan D, Byrd AK, Belachew B, Raney KD.
Methods Enzymol.

Targeting a Novel G-Quadruplex in the CARD11 Oncogene Promoter with Naptho(2,1-b)furan-1-ethanol,2-nitro- Requires the Nitro Group.
Swafford K, Acharya B, Xu YZ, Raney T, McCrury M, Saha D, Frett B, Kendrick S.
Genes (Basel).

Adaptive Control of the Meiotic Recombination Landscape by DNA Site-dependent Hotspots With Implications for Evolution.
Protacio RU, Davidson MK, Wahls WP.
Front Genet.

Bioactivation and Reactivity Research Advances – 2021 year in review.
Jackson KD, Argikar UA, Cho S, Crouch RD, Driscoll JP, Heck C, King L, Maw HH, Miller GP, Seneviratne HK, Wang S, Wei C, Zhang D, Khojasteh SC.
Drug Metab Rev.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $11.5 million in Phase II funding to the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute based on the successes of the Center for Translational Pediatric Research, established five years ago under the leadership of Alan Tackett, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The center applies a cutting-edge systems biology approach to understand how diseases like cancer form in children’s developing bodies. Read More

A 2019 paper in the Journal of Endocrinology by Dr. Giulia Baldini, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Dr. Kevin Phelan, Professor of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences, continues to provide obesity researchers with important insights and context. Their review article, “The melanocortin pathway and control of appetite-progress and therapeutic implications,” was one of the most highly cited articles in the Journal of Endocrinology in 2021 and is now being showcased in the journal’s Impact Factor Collection. Congratulations, Dr. Baldini and Dr. Phelan!

Congratulations to Drs. Reine Protacio, Tresor Mukiza, Mari Davidson and Wayne Wahls in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The significance of their recent Genetics paper on the plasticity of meiotic recombination – a component of evolution of species – was just highlighted in the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Genetics. These accolades were featured with top billing on the home page of the journal and will appear in the August print issue (volume 23, issue 8).  The discoveries made by Protacio et al. were also the topic of an invited perspective article in Frontiers in Genetics.

Dr. Kevin Raney, Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, notes that this is the tenth time that a scientific publication from Dr. Wahls’ laboratory has been discussed in a commentary, editorial, highlight or editors’ choice of top papers published during the year. “This is a remarkable achievement,” said Dr. Raney. “It reflects the sustained high quality of fundamental, basic science research conducted by a group of talented UAMS scientists.”

The Wahls laboratory uses a model experimental organism, fission yeast, to discover mechanisms for chromosome dynamics in meiosis, which is an essential component of the sexual life cycle of eukaryotes. Their research has provided insight into how chromosomes are transmitted faithfully between generations, how genetic recombination is positioned within genomes, and how meiotic processes contribute to the evolution of species.

Research in the Wahls laboratory is currently supported by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which is the basic sciences institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Reine U. Protacio, Mari K. Davidson and Wayne P. Wahls. Adaptive Control of the Meiotic Recombination Landscape by DNA Site-dependent Hotspots With Implications for Evolution. Front. Genet.

SURF students presented their research at the Mid-Summer Symposium.

Congratulations to Wayne Wahls, Ph.D., who received a new $1.69 million, four-year grant from the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) entitled “Systematic elucidation of DNA sequence codes.”

Joonas Jämsén, Ph.D., has joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Jämsén earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in biochemistry at the University of Turku in Finland. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Cancer Research in the UK (CRUK) in London, and the Institute for Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.

Since 2014, Dr. Jämsén has served as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Genome Integrity & Structural Biology Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Funded since 2018 by an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award, his research has focused on the molecular architecture of oxidative stress induced double strand break repair.