The new Human Anatomy lab was recently featured on The Center for Instructional Technology website’s “High Five!” section as an example of innovation in active learning through the use of technology. The Human Anatomy lab recently had multiple interactive display screens installed – students can look through anatomical images, compare multiple images, annotate them and discuss them in small groups using the new displays. Read the Article

On December 19th, Alison Stephen, the artist behind the Mural in the Bioscience Building, and also a JMU Bio Alum and former research student of Dr Jon Monroe’s, came to see her creation for the first time and was interviewed for Madison Magazine. More about Alison and the mural.

Happy Holidays from the Biology Department
We hope you have a relaxing and safe break. See photos of the faculty neighborhood holiday decoration contest! Neighborohood 3016 won with their Festivus display.

Spotlight on Alumni
Mike Graveen graduated from the JMU Biology department in 2011 and studied, among other things, Freshwater Ecology. This past year he has worked as an intern for the Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota, FL and sent us this photo of jellyfish in a tank. He reports having a great opportunity to do everything from caring for animals to physically building life support systems. He is looking into get more aquarium training and hopes to continue working with marine animals.

On Nov 8, President Alger visited the Bioscience Building to present four mini-grants to faculty as part of the 4-VA program. 4-VA is a consortium of four Virginia universities, created to foster collaboration. The purpose of the 4-VA grant awards is to support faculty efforts that contribute to developing research capacity and partnerships and shared courses. Biology’s Dr Christine May was one of the recipients. Her proposal was to fund a Mountain Stream Symposium to be held next fall.

On Friday November 2nd, 24 seventh grade students from Thomas Harrison Middle School visited the Bioscience Building to learn about DNA with Dr Kerry Cresawn as part of JMU’s Middle School Visitation Program. A total of 275 students visited JMU and were divided up into different subjects. In the DNA lab, students isolated DNA from strawberries (pictured), loaded DNA into gels and made candy models of the DNA double helix.

They’re at it again! BIO432 Microscopy students are making beautiful images from found items and posting them to the class photoblog. Check it out. Look for an exhibition of the best of the images in the Bioscience hallways after Thanksgiving.

Save the frogs!

Graduate students Molly Bletz and Andy Loudon surveying salamanders in the JMU Arboretum. Their projects in the Harris Lab involve ways to use beneficial anti-fungal bacteria (probiotics) to mitigate disease threats to amphibians.

Undergraduates do research in the summer too. Thanks to eight different scholarships and endowment funds, seven undergraduate students were able to conduct research with faculty in the Biology Department this summer. Pictured here are: Michael Ferras (Brown lab), Pria Chang (Halsell lab) and Kristie Prtorich (Mott lab).

Spotlight on undergraduate research: Kelsey Wilson-Henjum. Kelsey Wilson-Henjum has lost count of how many compounds she has tested in the last two years, but she does know that she’s looked at more than 20 for her honors thesis project alone. Kelsey is working on an antimicrobial project with Dr Kyle Seifert and two chemistry professors who synthesize antimicrobial compounds called amphiphiles. Read more...

Many spaces in the Bioscience Building were designed with student interaction and collaboration in mind. Spaces like this one are an example. Pictured is Dr Gabriele holding group office hours in one of the seating areas outside the faculty office neighborhoods.

The beautiful mural in the main atrium of the Bioscience building was designed and illustrated by JMU Biology alum Alison Stephen ('99). The mural depicts a 3-D rendering of a real DNA sequence from Arabidopsis thaliana - in fact, the sequence that Alison helped to sequence while doing undergraduate research at JMU! The mural also shows different organisms on each floor. You can read what Alison has to say about the mural on her blog and on the creative space site Behance.

Spotlight on undergraduate research:
Miranda Sowder has spent four semesters and one summer working in Dr Marta Bechtel’s lab on a project trying to artificially engineer a cornea (the clear covering on the front of the eye). She has spent some long hours in the lab, doing two- or three-day long time series analyses of cell cultures, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Read more ...

IDLS students Emily Quinn and Rachel Kinkaid (GSCI 166- The Environment in Context) teaching photosynthesis and how it relates to CO2 levels in the atmosphere to children at Building Bridges Preschool (shown here with Cadyn Lucas). The children went on a leaf walk, made posters, looked at stomata under the microscope and made dioramas about CO2 in the environment.

JMU alum Tom Buckley, Sonoma State University Biology Department , will be the keynote speaker at this year's Biosymposium, which will be held on April 12th & 13th. His talk is entitled "The poetry of nature is written in calculus: Why biologists need intensive immersion in applied mathematics and computation." More on Biosymposium

Undergraduate research student, Ben Stanley, in the May Lab samples Cerion on San Salvor Island, the Bahamas. Ben is pursuing the legacy of Stephen Jay Gould as he explores spatial variation in shell morphology of the land snail Cerion sp.

Undergraduate researcher Matt Wallace (pictured here with his adviser,Mark Gabriele) recently won top prize for Best Presentation at the 24th annual CVCSN (Central Virginia Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience) Symposium held at Virginia Commonwealth University on March 16th 2012. The theme of the meeting was "Wiring the Nervous System: Mechanisms of Synaptic Targeting."

Students in Geology and Ecology of the Bahamas field course (BIO/GEO 400)spent spring break at the Gerace Research Center on San Salvador Island. The group investigated geologic evidence for historic sea level changes and contemporary coral reef environments.

Graduate student Molly Bletz and her adviser Dr Reid Harris sampling newts in the George Washington National Forest. The Harris lab does research on the microbial ecology of amphibian skin, especially in the context of bacterial interactions with the lethal skin fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which is causing many amphibian populations to decline or go extinct.

Students in BIO432/526 (Microscopy)have been uploading images to a photoblog all semester. They find interesting looking objects at home or on their travels, bring them in and take photos of them on the microscopes, using the various microscopy techniques they learn in class. This one is an autofluorescing insect leg, seen under three different colors of light. See the rest.

On September 3, 2011, a group of JMU Biology students, led by Billy Flint embarked on the annual South River Cleanup. They divided into two groups and each group very thoroughly cleaned a 1-2 mile section of the South River in Waynesboro - from Canoes. As always, this resulted in canoes piled high with an astonishing array of trash and debris. See the photos.

Students in Freshwater Ecology (BIO 459) sample freshwater mussels at the Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Center during a weekend field trip to southwest Virginia. Freshwater mussels are one of the most endangered groups of organisms in North America, and our region hosts great diversity in these amazing organisms.

The research of Dr Reid Harris and his students will be featured in a documentary airing on the Smithsonian Channel in October. The documentary follows one of the causes of massive population decline in amphibians, and some of the solutions that are being developed. The program will go to air on October 12th and 13th. Watch the trailer.

Undergraduate research assistant, Ben Stanley, investigates freshwater mussels in a northern California river. Ben is working with Dr. Christine May to develop an understanding of how flood disturbance affects the western pearlshell mussel (Margaritifera sp.).

Rising senior Katy Holmes has been doing an internship at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi for 12 weeks this summer. She has been assisting with research on wild dolphin populations, stranding responses, animal care and rehab, and necropsies. Watch a video of a TV news story of a turtle release in which she participated.

Biology graduate student Julia Stutzman is featured in an article on the JMU website describing her research on plants of the Galapagos Islands.

Read the full article.

Meet the Biology Department's newest recruits! Pictured: Dr Alex Bannigan with Hamish (2 weeks old), Dr Heather Griscom with Adeline and Genevieve (8 weeks old) and Dr Patrice Ludwig with Frankie (14 weeks old), all born in spring 2011.

"Looking Closely" - an exhibition of images by biology students and photography students will be held at JMU's Institute for Visual Studies (208 Roop Hall) Feb 1-Apr 5, 2011. More information about the exhibit is available on the IVS website.

JMU students Michael Belovitch, Liz McCalister and Laura Robinson learn about rice production in a village in Eastern Madagascar as part of the JMU in  Madagascar  program 
(www.jmu.edu/international)

Students in BIO124 (Ecology and Evolution) Lab, identifying leaf-litter invertebrates that have colonized some cover-boards that they set out and then will calculate community diversity for their different cover-board sizes - the students learn about community diversity, and island biogeography.

On October 5th, 2010, an article appeared in the New York times that describes a field experiment underway in California that is based on a lab study conducted by the Harris lab. The experiment is testing the effectiveness at using a beneficial bacterium to counteract the devastating effects of a parasitic fungus on amphibian populations. Read the article.

The Biology Department will be getting a new home in 2012! Construction is due to begin any day on the East Campus, between the East Campus Library and the Physics/Chemistry building.

An article and video about the project appear on the JMU Office of Public Affairs website.

On Saturday September 11th, 2010, 9 students went out on South River with Billy Flint and Chris Rose, to clean it up. They retrieved, amongst other things, shopping carts, car parts, a bed frame and countless plastic bottles. If you would like to be involved in this kind of thing, consider joining TriBeta, the student Biology club. See more photos

Gills of the fungus Lepiota lutea, viewed with a dissecting microscope. Image taken by Microscopy student Devon Cowan ('12). Students in BIO427/526 (microscopy) are taking a picture a week and posting them to the class blog. At the end of semester, students will submit their favorite image to a competition. The winner will be decided by popular vote.See more beautiful images taken by students.

An article about research being conducted in Reid Harris' lab appeared in Scientific American on July 12, 2010.

The research investigates the role of a skin bacterium in combating a deadly fungal infection in frogs and salamanders. The work of recently graduated Master's student Brianna Lam is featured. Read the Article.

Undergraduate student Theresa Russo's ('09) image of antibody-stained pro-apoptotic protein CED-4 in an early Caenorabditis elegans embryo. 

In healthy cells not undergoing apoptosis, CED-4 is present and appears localized to the perinuclear region, where it is held inactive. Our research program focuses on correlating the localization of apoptotic proteins with the induction of apoptosis in different genetic backgrounds.

Image courtesy of the Bloss lab.

Autofluoresence under UV light from resilin, a rubber-like protein in the male genitalia of a giant water bug, Belostoma lutarium. 

For his honors project, John Drake (2009) compared the male genitalia from several water bugs and a waterscorpion to formulate hypotheses of homologies.

Image courtesy of the Keffer Lab.

Juvenile steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in streambed gravel. This species spends part of its lifecycle in the freshwater environment and part in the marine environment.

Students in the May lab are studying how accelerated erosion affects egg and juvenile fish survival.

Image courtesy of graduate student Morgan McHugh.

Professor Steve Cresawn being pied by a student in April 2010. 

The second annual pie your professor event was held to support Tri-Beta's Ian Kincheloe fund.

See more photos of Pie Your Professor 2010

Image courtesy of Beta Beta Beta.

Transmission Electron Micrograph of a bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria. 

This 'phage' was isolated and imaged by a first-year student in the HHMI-supported Viral Discovery course co-taught by Louise Temple (ISAT) and Steve Cresawn (Biology).

Image courtesy of Steve Cresawn.

Image of a living, late stage Drosophila embryo, dorsal anterior view, just prior to the head involution process studied in the Halsell lab.

The actin cytoskeleton outlining individual cells is visualized by localized Green Fluorescent Protein. Imaged captured by Maureen Filak ('10) during the summer REU program.

Image courtesy of the Halsell lab.