• Skip to main content
  • Skip to main content
Choose which site to search.
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Logo University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
College of Medicine: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  • UAMS Health
  • Jobs
  • Giving
  • About Us
    • News
  • Faculty/Staff
    • Primary Faculty
    • Secondary Faculty
    • Adjunct Faculty
    • Professor Emeritus
    • Track Members
    • Research and Administrative Staff
  • Research Areas
    • Cancer Biology
    • Experimental Therapeutics
    • Systems Biology and Bioinformatics
      • Systems Biology News
    • Structural Biology and Enzymology
    • Nutrition and Metabolism
    • Chromatin Biology, Nucleic Acid Chemistry, and Genetics
    • Neurobiology and Neurobiochemistry
  • Students
    • Graduate Program
    • Elective Courses
    • Student Highlight
    • Alumni
      • Graduates
      • Where Are They Now?
    • Grant Opportunities
    • Career Information
    • Resources for Current Students
    • Resilience
    • About the Area
  • Seminars
    • Faculty Seminars
    • Student Seminars
    • Webinars and Conferences
  • Undergraduate Programs
    • Summer Research
      • Program Details
      • Application Materials
      • Research Opportunities
      • Information for Participants
      • Prior Participants
      • SURF Related Publications
      • Contact Information
      • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Arkansas Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium
      • Details
      • Registration
      • Directions and Parking
      • Top Presentations
      • Contact
  • Research Resources
  1. University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
  2. College of Medicine
  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  4. Department News
  5. Page 2

Department News

Students Participate in Art from the Heart and Win People’s Choice Award

Emory Malone with her award winning cross-stich, Reflection.
Emory Malone with her award winning cross-stich, Reflection

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology graduate students Emory Malone and Reham Sewilam shared their artwork at Art for the Heart on April 15, 2025. Emory won the People’s Choice Award for her cross-stitch called Reflection. Congratulations Emory! Reham shared two two acrylic paintings titled Eclipse and Queen Cleopatra.

Reham Sewilam with her painting, Cleopatra
Reham Sewilam with her painting, Queen Cleopatra

Art from the Heart partners with the Paulette and Jay Mehta Creative Writing Awards and the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics in the College of Medicine. This collaboration highlights the artistic talent across various disciplines and recognizes UAMS community members with the presentation of awards at the Art from the Heart reception. The event showcased over 40 creative works in a variety of art forms. This year’s works were submitted by UAMS staff, faculty, students, and their immediate family members.

Reham Sewilam with her painting, Eclipse.
Reham Sewilam with her painting, Eclipse

Filed Under: Department News

High School Student Earns Awards at Regional and State Science Fairs

Picture of Meera Patel with her science fair poster
High school student Meera Patel with her award-winning research poster

Congratulations to Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (ASMSA) senior Meera Patel and her UAMS graduate student mentors, Reham Sewilam and Bethany Paxton. Meera won multiple prestigious awards for her research exploring novel ways to battle cancer risks. Meera earned first place in the Medicine and Health Sciences division and was a finalist for the overall awards at the West Central Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at ASMSA on February 27th-28th, 2025. Meera subsequently won first place in the Medicine and Health Sciences category at the 71st annual Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at the University of Central Arkansas on April 4th and 5th. Additionally, Meera was awarded the Naval Science Award from the Office of the Navy for excellent student research. Meera also placed 5th in the Arkansas Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and qualified for the National Symposium, which is a STEM competition for high school students sponsored by the Department of Defense.

Meera conducted her award-winning research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Eoff in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS. This research and training opportunity was supported by award 2341253 (to R.L.E.) from the National Science Foundation.

Filed Under: Department News

High School Student Earns Awards at Regional and State Science Fairs and Advances to International Competition

Picture of Carmella Lewis with her poster
High school student Carmella Lewis with her award-winning research poster.

Congratulations to Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (ASMSA) senior Carmella Lewis and her UAMS Biochemistry Department graduate student mentor, Ben May. Carmella won three prestigious awards for her research on the development of an assay to identify inhibitors of a protein that is a target for cancer therapy. Carmella earned first place in the Cellular and Molecular Biology division and second place overall in the West Central Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at ASMSA on February 27th-28th, 2025. Carmella also qualified to compete in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) at the West Central Regional Science Fair. ISEF is the world’s largest international STEM research competition for high school students in which nearly 2,000 finalists from more than 60 countries, regions and territories will compete in Columbus, Ohio from May 10th-16th, 2025. Carmella subsequently won second place in ISEF Finalist category at the 71st annual Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at the University of Central Arkansas on April 4th and 5th.

Carmella conducted her award-winning research in the laboratory of Dr. Alicia Byrd in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS. This research and training opportunity was supported by grant number P20GM121293 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.

Filed Under: Department News

Young Scientists Earn Distinction at State Science Fairs, Advance to International Competition

Photo of Akshara Chevireddy and Nyera Ali with their poster
High school students Akshara Chevireddy and Nyera Ali with their award-winning research poster

Congratulations to 11th grade Pulaski Academy high school students Akshara Chevireddy and Nyera Ali and their University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences mentor, Dr. Reine Protacio.  Nyera and Akshara recently won three prestigious awards for their research project on the efficiency of precise genome editing.  They earned third place in the Cellular and Molecular Biology division of the 43rd annual Central Arkansas Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at the University of Arkansas Little Rock on February 28th, 2025.  They subsequently won first place in Microbiology at the 71st annual Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair, which was held at the University of Central Arkansas on April 4th and 5th.  They also won the Outstanding Project Award from the Society for In Vitro Biology.  In addition, Akshara and Nyera were among the seven students from Arkansas who were selected to compete in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest international STEM research competition for high school students.  The week-long ISEF event, with nearly 2,000 finalists from more than 60 countries, regions and territories, will be held in Columbus, Ohio from May 10th-16th, 2025. Nyera and Akshara conducted their award-winning research in the laboratory of Dr. Wayne Wahls in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biologyat UAMS.  This research and training opportunity was supported in part by a research project grant (grant number GM145834) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health.

Filed Under: Department News

March 2025 Publications

Picture of the authors

SRSF6 and SRSF1 coordinately enhance the inclusion of human MUSK exon 10 to generate a Wnt-sensitive MuSK isoform.
Nasrin F, Nagar P, Islam MR, Heeamoni SA, Hasan MM, Ohno K, Rahman MA.
NAR Mol Med. 2025

Marie Burdine

DNA-PKcs governs LAT-dependent signaling in CD4 + and CD8 + T cells.
Rainwater RR, Azevedo-Pouly AC, Waldrip ZJ, Hicks BH, Callais NA, Koss B, Storey AJ, Burdine L, Burdine MS.
bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2025

Filed Under: Department News

Matthew Thompson

5th year, GPIBS, Biochemistry track

Education

Harding University, B.S. Molecular and Cellular Biology with a minor in Computer Science

Research

My research focuses on deriving mechanisms of a relatively understudied human helicase known as DNA Helicase B, or HELB for short. HELB is a first responder to many types of DNA damage, and our lab has found that it also responds to events at replication forks during DNA replication. My project aims to define molecular mechanisms of HELB action at stalled and reversed replication forks to better understand where HELB fits into various DNA replication stress response and DNA repair pathways. Notably, loss of HELB leads to resistance to PARP inhibitor (olaparib) chemotherapy in BRCA1-/- mouse xenograft models, and loss of HELB causes cells to become sensitive to ATR inhibitor chemotherapeutics (ceralasertib, etc.). We have found that HELB is recruited to ssDNA to aid loading and unloading of various ssDNA binding proteins to aid downstream replication stress and DNA repair processes. Hopefully my research (and the broader research within the Byrd lab) to define the role(s) and mechanism(s) of HELB can be used in the future to better predict and understand chemotherapeutic efficacy.

Notable about his time as a Graduate

During my time as a graduate student, I have enjoyed getting to do a wide variety of different techniques and day-to-day tasks. On any given day, I could be:

-growing human cell lines (my millions of “children”)

-growing bacteria (my other “children”)

-accidentally growing bacteria with my human cell lines (oops)

-writing something (and pretending to be a fiction author)

-making a poster (and pretending to be a graphic designer)

-coding something (and pretending to be a programmer)

-analyzing sequencing data (and pretending like I understand anything at all about Bayesian statistics)

-doing a western blot (for the 10th time)

-silanizing my own coverslips for DNA combing (and then never actually using them)

I have learned that, if you are indecisive about your career path, graduate school lets you do it all at once (for better or for worse)!

Career Goals

My career goal is to be a science educator and/or communicator in some capacity. I have recently accepted a job offer from Lyon College in Batesville, AR to become an Assistant Professor within their Chemistry Department! I will be teaching biochemistry, general chemistry, and starting my own independent research with students in the Fall 2025 semester. I am excited to hone my communication and teaching skills, and I am excited to help students reach their career goals by engaging with chemistry in the world around them.

Experiment or technique you would most like to do

I think it would be super fun to do 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis to visualize replication fork stalling at a specific site in the genome. This relatively obscure technique produces wild looking smears and arcs of DNA that can (somehow) be interpreted to learn about DNA replication at specific genomic loci. When I first came across these kinds of gels, I always joked that the images required magic to interpret.

Fun Facts

I participate in a lot of local musical ensembles. I play clarinet/contra alto clarinet in the North Little Rock Community Band, until recently played cornet in the Natural State Brass Band, and sing in my church choir. I can also play bassoon, but I’ll have to save more money to be able to purchase one!

Publications

  1. Thompson, M. D., Malone, E. G., & Byrd, A. K. 2022. Monitoring helicase-catalyzed unwinding of multiple duplexes simultaneously. Methods in Enzymology 672:1–27. doi:10.1016/BS.MIE.2022.02.018.
  2. Thompson, M.D., and Byrd A.K. 2024. Untargeted CUT&Tag and BG4 CUT&Tag are both enriched at G-quadruplexes and accessible chromatin. bioRxiv 2024.09.26.615263; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.26.615263.
  3. Malone, E. G., Thompson, M. D., & Byrd, A. K. 2022. Role and Regulation of Pif1 Family Helicases at the Replication Fork. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2022, Vol. 23, Page 3736 23(7):3736. doi:10.3390/IJMS23073736.
  4. Osei, B., May, B. H., Stiefel, C. M., West, K. L., Zafar, M. K., Thompson, M. D., Bergstrom, E., Leung, J. W., Enemark, E. J., and Byrd, A. K. 2024. Rare SNP in the HELB gene interferes with RPA interaction and cellular function of HELB. bioRxiv 2024.02.27.582415. doi:10.1101/2024.02.27.582415.
  5. Byrd, A. K., Malone, E. G., Hazeslip, L., Zafar, M. K., Harrison, D. K., Thompson, M. D., Gao, J., Perumal, S. K., Marecki, J. C., & Raney, K. D. 2021. A structural feature of Dda helicase which enhances displacement of streptavidin and trp repressor from DNA. Protein Science. doi:10.1002/PRO.4232.
  6. Chappell, K., Manna, K., Washam, C. L., Graw, S., Alkam, D., Thompson, M. D., Zafar, M. K., Hazeslip, L., Randolph, C., Gies, A., Bird, J. T., Byrd, A. K., Miah, S., & Byrum, S. D. 2021. Multi-omics data integration reveals correlated regulatory features of triple negative breast cancer. Molecular Omics 17(5):677–691. doi:10.1039/D1MO00117E

Awards

Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Cancer Research Training and Education Core Travel Award (2024)

Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Cancer Research Training and Education Core Travel Award (2023)

3rd place, UAMS Bhuvan Award for Excellence in Biochemistry Research (2023)

Runner up, UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Award for Outstanding Cancer Research (2023)

Finalist, UAMS Student Research Day 3 Minute Thesis Competition (2022)

Filed Under: Department News, Student Highlights

Grover Miller named Editor-in-Chief of Drug Metabolism Reviews

Grover Miller

Dr. Grover P. Miller, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Drug Metabolism Reviews, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics. The journal publishes reviews on a wide array of drug metabolism research including environmentally toxic chemicals, absorption, metabolism and secretion. The journal publication draws from leaders in academia, industry, and government research on the biological impacts of foreign, biologically active (xenobiotic) compounds to human health. Dr. Miller brings extensive expertise in the metabolic activation and clearance of small molecules, particularly in relation to pharmacological and toxicological effects.

Filed Under: Department News

Jessica Kelliher awarded ACS fellowship

Jessica Kelliher

Congratulations to Dr. Jessica Kelliher, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, on receiving a highly competitive fellowship award from the American Cancer Society (ACS). Dr. Kelliher will use the $217,500, three-year award for a research project aimed at exploiting DNA repair in cell therapy for solid tumors, in the lab of her mentor, Assistant Professor Dr. Brian Koss. Dr. Alan Tackett, Distinguished Professor and Executive Associate Dean for Research in the College of Medicine, is a co-mentor.

Filed Under: Department News

Distinguished Service Award

Alan Diekman, Ph.D.
(Image credit: Evan Lewis)

Congratulations to Dr. Alan Diekman, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology, on being selected to receive the 2025 Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Andrology (ASA). Dr. Diekman is nationally recognized for his research into the molecular mechanisms of reproductive biology and has been active in the ASA for over two decades. He has served in numerous leadership roles and as ASA Treasurer coauthored the organization’s five-year strategic plan in 2021. He will be recognized in a March 30 ceremony at the annual conference of the ASA and the International Society of Andrology (ISA).

Filed Under: Department News

December 2024 Publications

Kirk West

Autophosphorylation of the Tousled-like kinases TLK1 and TLK2 regulates recruitment to damaged chromatin via PCNA interaction.
West KL, Nguyen TTN, Tengler KA, Kreiling N, Raney KD, Ghosal G, Leung JW.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2024

Dan Dixon

Regulation of autophagy by Rab27B in colorectal cancer.
Afroz S, Preet R, Vishwakarma V, Evans AE, Magstadt AN, Dixon DA.
Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2024

Filed Under: Department News

  • «Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 32
  • Next Page»
UAMS College of Medicine LogoUAMS College of MedicineUniversity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Mailing Address: 4301 West Markham Street, Little Rock, AR 72205
Phone: (501) 686-7000
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Statement

© 2025 University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences