News

Iverson receives Innovation Catalyst Fund award

Sep. 4, 2024—Tina Iverson, Louise B. McGavock Chair and professor of pharmacology, received an Innovation Catalyst Fund award for her research project, “Inhibition of Bacterial Chemotaxis as an Antibiotic Potentiator,” which focuses on chemotaxis—a versatile process that allows bacteria to swim toward energy-rich molecules, find preferred niches for infection, avoid harmful species, change speeds, and form biofilms—as...

CryoEM awarded S10 grant

Sep. 4, 2024—Teru Nakagawa and the CSB CryoEM Facility have been awarded an NIH S10 Shared Instrumentation Grant to purchase a Talos L120C TEM. This TEM will be used to image negatively-stained samples and for screening vitrified samples. Researchers will use this robust screening TEM for extensive trial and error efforts to optimize and identify specimens most...

September MOE advanced training sessions: X-ray crystallography

Aug. 30, 2024—Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) software users can participate in training sessions focused on X-ray crystallography. The sessions are held throughout September and cover topics, including, structure preparation, sidechain rotamer exploration, electron density maps and solvent analysis with 3D-RISM. Mauricio Rodriguez, of Chemical Computing Group, will lead the training sessions via Zoom. Sign up for as...

Understanding NEIL1-RPA binding at the intersection of DNA repair and replication

Aug. 23, 2024—Reactive oxygen species damage DNA through the oxidation of bases and can result in a variety of diseases such as cancer, accelerated aging, and neurodegeneration. Single-strand DNA, which exists transiently during replication, is especially sensitive to reactive oxygen species. Oxidized bases are readily repaired by the base excision repair (BER) pathway, but incomplete repair during...

**Hitting A. baumannii where it hurts: novel insights into DNA repair pathways as therapeutic targets**

Aug. 9, 2024—Acinetobacter baumannii is a hospital-acquired human pathogen that can result in serious infections of the blood, wounds, lungs, and urinary tract. These infections are further complicated by rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance in this organism, making A. baumannii the fifth leading cause of antimicrobial resistance-associated deaths globally. There is, therefore, an urgent need for novel...

CSB Research Faculty Profile: Mintu Chandra

Aug. 7, 2024—Mintu Chandra, PhD, is a research assistant professor in the Biological Sciences department and currently works in the Jackson lab. Experiments in the lab allow him to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge, but he also finds inspiration from his experiments in the kitchen. Meet Mintu … What project are you currently working on?...

NMR facility awarded S10 grant

Jul. 25, 2024—Congratulations to the Vanderbilt Biomolecular NMR Facility (VUBNMR) staff on the successful submission and approval of an National Institute of Health (NIH) S10 grant application for the purchase of a new 800 MHz NMR spectrometer. The new instrument replaces the existing spectrometer, installed 25 years ago, which was one of the first 800 MHz NMR...

CSB Research Faculty Profile: Elwood Mullins

Jun. 21, 2024—Elwood Mullins, PhD, is a research assistant professor in the Biological Sciences department and currently works in the Eichman lab. While he understands the key to a cohesive lab environment, his work-life balance might be a little off. Meet Elwood … What project are you currently working on? I’m currently studying eukaryotic DNA replication, specifically...

Research Spotlight: Fesik Lab

Jun. 14, 2024—Fesik Lab: BI-0474 Researchers from the lab of Stephen Fesik, Orrin H. Ingram II Chair in Cancer Research, have added BI-0474 as the second molecule co-discovered by Vanderbilt to the open science portal opnMe.com, an initiative being driven by biopharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. Read more on the Basic Sciences website.

Putting the fun back in antifungals: new insights into Acanthamoeba drug targets

Jun. 7, 2024—Acanthamoeba is a genus of free-living pathogenic protozoa found ubiquitously in the environment. In humans, acanthamoeba can cause diseases such as blinding keratitis, an infection of the eye, or granulomatous amebic encephalitis (GAE), a generally fatal infection of the brain and spinal cord. Antifungals which target the biosynthesis of fungal sterols, such as ergosterol, are...

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