Recently in Biology Category

Yue-Wern Huang's latest research involves creating a kind of Trojan Horse. But unlike the mythical gift from the Greeks or the more contemporary computer virus that bears the name, Huang's is designed to sneak good stuff into a bad place.

Huang, an associate professor of biological sciences at S&T, is building tiny vessels of cell-penetrating proteins that could possibly transport a cargo of quantum dots, along with proteins, medicine or DNA, into a malignant or otherwise infected cell and release the healing cargo -- medicine or some therapeutic agent of the future -- into the microscopic "Troy": the walled city of a cell.

The vessel -- Huang's Trojan Horse -- is a nontoxic protein transduction domain, or PTD,which is derived from a virus that can penetrate the cellular membrane.

This latest work is funded through a $225,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

For this long summer overseas study program in Taiwan, the “nanobiotechnology” team took a break to visit Kenting National Park and nearby National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. Kenting National Park is located in the southernmost tip of Taiwan. With a mean temperature of 23oC and an annual rainfall of 2,200 mm, the park enjoys a tropical climate of long summers and mild winters. The wet season is from May to October and the dry season from October to April. The northeast monsoon, also known as "fallen-wind", prevails every year from October through March. Due to its unique climate and various landforms, Kenting National Park is able to support a rich variety of botanic life. One of its many unique features is the most diversified ecosystems of coral reefs in the world, with many kinds of tropical vegetations. The only problem is that the government built a nuclear power plant near the park and the discharge of warmer water into the sea has resulted in bleaching coral reef extensively. This is a classical struggle for people living in a small but populated island – sustainability vs. human livelihood.

My research in Taiwan is becoming beyond entertaining! However, it wasn’t always so. For about two and a half weeks I have been overloaded with several experiments all at once—trying to find a suitable bacterial strain for protein expression, electrophoresis, etc. Usually, I’m in the lab from 8 a.m. to 6 or 7:30 p.m. and then go out for an amazing Chinese meal with my newfound lab friends!

So, I went to church. Not exactly what you thought would be the start of a story, huh? It was an interesting conglomeration of Chinese and English, and in a flashback to Rolla, I was the only girl. Prior to beginning, the priest, who came to Taiwan from France 8 years ago, handed me an English Bible with the scripture readings so I could follow along. I even joined in during the Alleluia since I recognized the tune (and the fact that it’s still ALLELUIA kinda helped).

Yay! There ARE people reading this! It’s so much more fun to write when you know you have an audience.

Rachel, the rabbit. I just saw it as we were walking around the Dragon Boat festival, and had never seen one so tiny before. When I cropped the picture, I purposely left the Coke bottle in the frame for a size reference. Just one of those random things that I found entertaining.

And for anyone who is unaware, we left the U.S. on May 26, and will be returning July 22. So we’ll be here for eight weeks, with about a week in the middle where we’ll be taking a ‘vacation’ to Kenting National Park and visiting another university.

Guest blogger Jaime Statler continues to share updates from Taiwan.

HEY! I know you are reading this, so talk to me! Leave me comments, ask me questions, let me know I’m not talking to myself here. I’m writing about what I think would be interesting to read, but if you are curious about anything, or want to hear more about something, just leave a comment. I’d love for this to be more interactive.

Alright, to start, I want to explain the picture of the fish from the last post, in case anyone else is confused. Yes, that is a tiny fried fish. There was a small pile of them on my plate of lunch the other day. I’ve been pretty willing to try just about everything that’s been thrown at me, but the exception is seafood. Not only do I not like fish, but I have a problem eating something that can stare back at me. So shrimp, one of the few kinds of seafood I actually do like, is also usually not an option, because they are typically served whole, heads, legs, roe, and all.

Jaime's post from Taiwan continues.

So I was wrong in my count of lab members. There’s not twelve. There’s eighteen. But I’m doing much better on names, although by no means do I have all of them yet. Every Monday starts with a lab meeting, where each member discusses the work they did over the previous week. It was a long meeting this Monday, because they are not used to presenting in English. There have been some interesting mix-ups in translation, although the only one that immediately comes to mind was substituting “machine” with “mushroom” when explaining the menu at a restaurant.

A group of Missouri S&T students are in Taiwan this summer for a research project. Here's the latest on their journey from Jamie Statler.

So I’ve heard it said that every plan has to have its glitch, and I think our trip has already had its share, just from the travel to get here in Taiwan. First, Angela has a ridiculously turbulent flight from KC to Detroit, while Isaac, Dr. Huang, and myself decided that we had a new pilot for our flight from St. Louis, judging from the weaving on the runway at takeoff, and the bouncing on landing. If that had been all, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. But after that, our flight out of Detroit was delayed for three and a half hours due to a broken plane. We are all boarded, head out to the runway, accelerate… and stop. Some light is apparently going off, so the pilot tells us we are going to try again, see if it was just a computer malfunction. Such a reassuring turn of phrase when dealing with air travel, wouldn’t you agree? Well, it happens again, so once more we just accelerate down the runway only to stop and head back to the terminal. After holding us on the plane for an hour while they try to fix the problem, but they end up making us deboard and move to a new plane. Which we have to wait another hour to board. This one at least works the first time, and we finally take off. Oh, and I’m being blamed for the glitch, seeing as the same thing happened to me when I traveled to China a few years ago.

Tara Gosnell, an English and technical communication major, ends her series of blog posts from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas with a note about "the final countdown."


21 May

Today was more or less a "choose your own adventure" day, as the geology group went off on some field trip and biology went to the high school for an assembly. A couple English students went with the biology group, who presented a digital projector they bought for the school through fundraising. We stood outside, and I could only hear part of what was being said. I heard a prayer, they recited the Lord's Prayer, they sang the national anthem of the Bahamas, recited the pledge to the Bahamas, there was a reading from Genesis, a song called' What a Mighty God We Serve,' another prayer, and then a short speech from the principal. Sparrow, one of the biology students, said a few words to the students, and then we presented the projector and left. The whole thing lasted about 10 minutes. The students sang really well.

Amanda Conigliaro, a geology and geophysics student, ends her series of blog posts from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas with a note about car repair and the continental shelf.

Today was our last full day on the island, but unfortunately, it did not go completely as planned. The geology group split from the other groups today, and began the morning heading to Fernandez Bay to snorkel over Telephone Pole Reef. Not only did we see some amazing creatures, but we also got to swim to the continental shelf where the ocean floor dropped from beneath us and we stared down into the vast depths of the blue sea.