Congratulations to Stephanie Byrum, Ph.D. who was honored as Distinguished Alumni by Atlanta High School in Atlanta, Texas.
Stephanie Byrum named Distinguished Alumna
August 2024 Publications
MC4R Localizes at Excitatory Postsynaptic and Peri-Postsynaptic Sites of Hypothalamic Neurons in Primary Culture.
Griffin H, Hanson J, Phelan KD, Baldini G.
Cells. 2024
Creating meiotic recombination-regulating DNA sites by SpEDIT in fission yeast reveals inefficiencies, target-site duplications, and ectopic insertions
Protacio RU, Dixon S, Davidson MK, Wahls WP
biomolecules 2024
Discovery of the DNA-PKcs inhibitor DA-143 which exhibits enhanced solubility relative to NU7441.
Waldrip ZJ, Acharya B, Armstrong D, Hanafi M, Rainwater RR, Amole S, Fulmer M, Azevedo-Pouly AC, Burns A, Burdine L, Frett B, Burdine MS.
Sci Rep. 2024
Development of New Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma Mouse Models.
Mehdi SH, Xu Y-Z, Schultz LD, Kim E, Lee YG Kendrick S, Yoon D.
cancers. 2024
Distance-dependent effects on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in Schizosaccharomyces pombe compromise efficiency and create unsought alleles.
Protacio RU, Malone EG, Wahls WP.
MicroPubl Biol. 2024
Climate Change and New Challenges for Rural Communities: Particulate Matter Matters.
Miousse IR, Hale RB, Alsbrook S, Boysen G, Broadnax T, Murry C, Williams C, Park CH, Richards R, Reedy J, Chalbot MC, Kavouras IG, Koturbash I.
Sustainability. 2023
Enhanced translational activity is linked to lymphatic endothelial cell activation in cutaneous leishmaniasis.
Fry L, Roys H, Bowlin A, Venugopal G, Bird JT, Weaver A, Byrum SD, Weinkopff T.
bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2024
Research Milestone for Kevin Raney
Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Raney, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has now published more than 100 scientific papers that are indexed by PubMed at the National Library of Medicine.
Congratulations to Reine Protacio and Colleagues — In the NEWS at Science
Research spearheaded by Dr. Reine Protacio, Staff Scientist in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS, was recently highlighted in the journal Science. A full-length NEWS article describes how Protacio discovered that some batches of Agar—which is used to solidify solutions of nutrients in petri plates—were killing the fission yeast cells that the laboratory uses to study how chromosomes behave during cell divisions.
The original research article, published as a preprint in bioRxiv, was co-authored by Drs. Mari Davidson (UAMS), Wayne Wahls (UAMS) and Dominique Helmlinger (University of Montpellier in France).
July 2024 Publications
Distance-dependent effects on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in Schizosaccharomyces pombe compromise efficiency and create unsought alleles
Protacio RU, Malone EG, Wahls WP
MicroPubl Biol. 2024
Understanding proteome quantification in an interactive learning module on Google Cloud Platform.
O’Connell KA, Kopchick B, Carlson T, Belardo D, Byrum SD.
Brief Bioinform. 2024
Eukaryotic Pif1 helicase unwinds G-quadruplex and dsDNA using a conserved wedge.
Hong Z, Byrd AK, Gao J, Das P, Tan VQ, Malone EG, Osei B, Marecki JC, Protacio RU, Wahls WP, Raney KD, Song H.
Nat Commun. 2024
Understanding PTM Cross Talk Through a Visualization Tool, PTMViz.
Chappell K, Byrum SD.
Methods Mol Biol. 2024
Enhancing Neoadjuvant Virotherapy’s Effectiveness by Targeting Stroma to Improve Resectability in Pancreatic Cancer.
Ferdous KU, Tesfay MZ, Cios A, Shelton RS, Hartupee C, Urbaniak A, Chamcheu JC, Mavros MN, Giorgakis E, Mustafa B, Simoes CC, Miousse IR, Basnakian AG, Moaven O, Post SR, Cannon MJ, Kelly T, Nagalo BM.
Biomedicines. 2024
Bioactivation and reactivity research advances – 2023 year in review.
Wang S, Argikar UA, Chatzopoulou M, Cho S, Crouch RD, Dhaware D, Gu TJ, Heck CJS, Johnson KM, Kalgutkar AS, Liu J, Ma B, Miller GP, Rowley JA, Seneviratne HK, Zhang D, Khojasteh SC.
Drug Metab Rev. 2024
June 2024 publications
Laboratory horror stories: Poison in the agars.
Davidson MK, Protacio RU, Helmlinger D, Wahls WP.
bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2024
Long-read sequencing for brain tumors.
Shelton WJ, Zandpazandi S, Nix JS, Gokden M, Bauer M, Ryan KR, Wardell CP, Vaske OM, Rodriguez A.
Front Oncol. 2024
Molecular insight into interactions between the Taf14, Yng1 and Sas3 subunits of the NuA3 complex.
Nguyen MC, Rostamian H, Raman A, Wei P, Becht DC, Erbse AH, Klein BJ, Gilbert TM, Zhang G, Blanco MA, Strahl BD, Taverna SD, Kutateladze TG.
Nat Commun. 2024
Metabolically active neutrophils represent a permissive niche for Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Tucker Andrews J, Zhang Z, Krishna Prasad GVR, Huey F, Nazarova EV, Wang J, Ranaraja A, Weinkopff T, Li LX, Mu S, Birrer MJ, Ching-Cheng Huang S, Zhang N, Argüello RJ, Philips JA, Mattila JT, Huang L.
Mucosal Immunol. 2024
An ex vivo human precision-cut lung slice platform provides insight into SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and antiviral drug efficacy.
Pechous RD, Malaviarachchi PA, Banerjee SK, Byrum SD, Alkam DH, Ghaffarieh A, Kurten RC, Kennedy JL, Zhang X.
J Virol. 2024
May 2024 Publications
Two residues in the DNA binding site of Pif1 helicase are essential for nuclear functions but dispensable for mitochondrial respiratory growth.
Gao J, Proffitt DR, Marecki JC, Protacio RU, Wahls WP, Byrd AK, Raney KD.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2024
Discovery of 9H-pyrimido[4,5-b]indole derivatives as dual RET/TRKA inhibitors.
Acharya B, Saha D, Garcia Garcia N, Armstrong D, Jabali B, Hanafi M, Frett B, Ryan KR.
Bioorg Med Chem. 2024
Welcome SURF students
We are pleased to welcome our Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) students for an exciting summer of research.
Alan Diekman chosen to give faculty address at honors convocation
By Linda Satter
The College of Medicine Class of 2024 class chose Alan Diekman, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, to deliver the faculty address at the honors convocation, and Diekman used the opportunity to inject some humor into the otherwise weighty ceremony.
He recalled an incident that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in his three-hour classes about biochemistry and endocrinology being held virtually for nine weeks in the graduating students’ first year and five weeks in their second year.
“Often, I told my colleagues that I felt that I was presenting a morning TV talk show,” Diekman said. “We were physically isolated, but we caught glimpses of each other in our homes, maybe with family members or pets.”
Meanwhile, he said, “the chat function, which permitted a level of discourse that would not happen if we were meeting in person, was always very active in class.”
He said it was through that function that “one of your classmates gave me some of the best advice I have ever received.”
Diekman said he can’t remember the subject on which he was pontificating — “let’s pretend it was an erudite exposition on glycolysis, in which I believe I twice used the word ‘behoove’” — when a chat message popped up that had been shared to the entire class. It said, “Calm down, Alan.”
As he repeated the phrase and ripples of laughter filled the hall, Diekman recalled that “I was momentarily speechless — not because I was told to calm down or because I was addressed by my first name, but because of how hysterically funny I thought it was.”
“I knew humor was the intent — I wasn’t upset,” he clarified. “I suspect some of you were also astonished when you saw that chat message, and I still laugh thinking about it. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell of my experiences as an educator.”
Eric Porter, a class favorite, is congratulated onstage. His peers gave him the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, which recognizes compassion in the delivery of medical care.
But his reason for sharing it, he said, is that “it is a memory of your class that I hold dear, and I realized it was some of the best advice anyone could receive during a pandemic. Calm down, Alan. It reminds me of the poster, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On,’ and that’s what you did.”
Diekman said that to carry on during a pandemic, the class had to be resilient, adaptable and self-reliant. He said the classmates’ presence years later at the honors convocation proved that they had those attributes, which will serve them well in their medical careers.
“But being self-reliant doesn’t always mean going in alone,” he said. “You need to be honest about yourself regarding your abilities and your physical and mental limitations,” which includes not being afraid to call in a more experienced physician when needed.
“It will behoove you to remember you are resilient, you are adaptable, and you are self-reliant,” he said.
Then, as a grin spread across his face, he said, “I’ve been waiting to say this for three years: Calm down, Connor.”
With a nod to Connor Roset, the class representative who will soon begin an emergency medicine residency at UAMS (and who agreed beforehand to be mentioned in Diekman’s address), he stepped away from the microphone to hearty applause.
Kirk West Wins Award for Outstanding Cancer Research
Congratulations to Kirk West, Ph.D., on his award for Outstanding Poster Presentation at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute retreat. Kirk is mentored by Kevin Raney, Ph.D.