Month: August 2024

You may have seen Morgan in your favorite yoga class, walking around the Life Sciences Building on her way to lab, reading a new book in the library or she may have served you a coffee at All In Coffee Shop.

As an Honors senior biochemistry major from Fort Mill, SC, Morgan likes being around like-minded people in the Genetics and Biochemistry Department.

“The Genetics and Biochemistry Department has introduced me to some of my best friends and has exposed me to so many of our incredible research faculty. My research mentors and professors have continuously inspired me to become a better student and researcher, and I would not be where I am today without each one of them.”

For three years, Morgan performed research in Professor Dr. Hong Luo’s lab, which is focused on transgenic turfgrass modifications in hopes of developing genetic lines that are less susceptible to environmental stressors like heat and drought.

“My primary role was in transgene containment to prevent genetic contamination with naturally occurring grass species, but the work that was published dealt with a miRNA that improved crop yield.”

Morgan has had many successes in Dr. Luo’s lab, even having a publication accepted with one of his graduate students. The article is titled “MicroRNA169 integrates multiple factors to modulate plant growth and abiotic stress responses.”

The summer of her freshman year she spent at the Center for Human Genetics under Drs. Trudy Mackay and Robert Anholt studying the genetic underpinnings of cocaine use disorder in Drosophila melanogaster. Morgan researched the effects of a multiple-day period exposure to cocaine in fly lines that were genetically predisposed to cocaine addiction.

“Coupled with behavioral assays that proved cocaine exposure led to adverse physical effects, my research reinforced the idea that prolonged cocaine use disorder has a genetic component.”

This summer, Morgan was granted a position in the Duke PRIME-Cancer program in Dr. Stefanie Sarantopoulos’ lab studying chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease, which is an autoimmune disease that can develop in leukemia and lymphoma patients that receive stem cell transplants. Here, Morgan’s focus was studying the role of the TLR7-IRF5 signaling pathway on the activation of lung fibroblasts, which leads to fibrotic airway diseases that are common in cGVHD patients.

“My experience here was great! I became close with my mentors and the members of the lab, and the program exposed us to so many great researchers around Duke. It was great to meet students from around the country with similar interests!”

When Morgan was named a Seifert Scholar the summer after her sophomore year, she began working in Dr. Kerry Smith’s lab, which is her main focus this year. Her research in Dr. Smith’s lab is centered on the importance of glycolysis in Cryptococcus neoformans, which is a primary cause of fungal meningitis. She has been working to identify biochemical inhibitors that target different steps of glycolysis to prevent their growth as potential therapeutic interventions for patients with fungal meningitis.

“I have identified Baicalein as a potential enolase inhibitor, so I am diving further into that and plan to develop an enolase knockout strain to confirm the phenotypic effects of both. I plan to apply for departmental honors with this project this fall.”

Morgan’s future plans include applying to graduate school this fall to obtain her Ph.D. in biochemistry or pharmacology, hoping to work in project leadership in the pharmaceutical industry. After her Ph.D., she plans to get her Master’s of Public Health to become involved in researching disparities in drug and medical care access in underserved and underrepresented communities around the world.

“My international travels have inspired me to gain work and research experience out of the country as well, so I will be looking for degree and training opportunities abroad.”

As a child, Dr. Mathew Angel was on the Clemson campus quite often for academic events, basketball camps in the summers, going to sporting events or visiting faculty members with his dad, who was a high school physics teacher. So, by the time he started his freshman year, he knew his way around.

“I started at Clemson in 2003 as a General Engineering major but left school after my third semester to enlist in the Army for about 2.5 years, deploying to Iraq for a year during that time.”

Angel returned to Clemson in Fall 2007 as a biochemistry major on an Army ROTC scholarship, where he was the involved in and the president of both the Biochemistry and Genetics Club and the Clemson University Student Veterans Association. Upon graduating in 2010 with a degree in Biochemistry and Genetics and a minor in Military Leadership, Angel commissioned into the Army as a Medical Service Corps officer and spent six years as a Field Medical Officer in the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

“I was selected by the Army to go back to school to pursue my graduate degree, so I returned to Clemson on a fully-funded Army educational program (I just can’t stay away from that place for long!) in 2017, still on active duty, and graduated in 2022 from Dr. Cheryl Ingram-Smith’s lab with my Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Ingram-Smith was and still is an amazing mentor for me, and we continue to communicate regularly.”

Angel currently works as an Army Biochemist at the Defense Centers for Public Health – Aberdeen in Maryland, which has the largest public health laboratory in the Department of Defense (DoD). He works in the Molecular Biology Division as the Chief of the Microorganism Analysis Branch. Angel’s lab designs and implements molecular biology laboratory methods to conduct biosurveillance of environmental matrices in order to protect the health of our populations.

“We primarily conduct testing of drinking water and wastewater to detect, identify, and quantify biological threats of interest, specifically human pathogens of concern and antimicrobial resistance markers of clinical significance. We also work to establish wastewater surveillance programs, which I first learned about while I was in grad school at Clemson during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Angel has been involved as the DoD co-lead on wastewater surveillance in developing policy and doctrine at the DoD level as well as forming partnerships and collaborations with DoD and U.S. Government partners. In the wastewater surveillance project, he is using specific technologies, namely quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect, identify, and quantify the presence of pathogens of concern in our populations.

“This was absolutely not the path I envisioned taking in my career. When I decided to switch majors from engineering to biochemistry, I did so because I enjoyed biology and chemistry in high school and thought it might be more interesting for me to get into the life sciences. At Clemson, I learned indirectly about public health and pathogen surveillance during the pandemic. All that led me to what I’m doing now!”

Angel plans to retire from the Army in about six years, during which time he intends to stay involved in his current public health work. Eventually he would like to move back to South Carolina and is interested in returning to Clemson as a faculty member. Dr. Matthew Angel is originally from Easley, SC, currently lives in Maryland, but loves coming back to Clemson to visit!

Genetics and biochemistry students who participated in the Summer CI + UR program presented posters of their research at the Summer Showcase on August 20th in the Watt Family Innovation Center. Students included Kristen Gulbrandsen, Elizabeth Caldwell, Helen Kiser, Brooke Dillingham, Kate Miller, Kaite Cross and Britana Myers.

Kristen Gulbrandsen ’25, biochemistry

Title: “Exploring Environmental Factors that Influence the Inhibition of Clostridium innocuum on Enterococcus faecalis”

Elizabeth Caldwell ’24, genetics

Title: “Characterization of different UBTF tandem duplications in acute myeloid leukemia”

Helen Kiser ’24, genetics

Title: “Characterization of mitochondrial genomes and phylomitogenomic analyses confirms the existence of cryptic species in Gonodactylaceus”

Brooke Dillingham ’24, genetics

Title: “Identification of DNA Binding Mutants in BRCA2”

Kate Miller ’24, genetics

Title: “Examining facial development in response to β-estradiol exposure using Tropheops Sp. ‘Red Fin’ cichlids”

Katie Cross ’25, biochemistry

Title: “The effects of progesterone exposure on the craniofacial development of Pseudotropheus livingstonii fish embryos”

Britana Myers ’24, genetics

Title: “Truncating MEILB2 and DNA repair”

Dr. Stephen Dolan has revealed previously unknown information about how bacteria and fungi interact in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis (CF), which could lay the groundwork for more effective treatment and detection of polymicrobial lung infections in people with CF.

CF, one of the most common genetic diseases in the United States, causes an abnormally sticky, thick mucus to build up in the lungs, providing the perfect breeding ground for infections.

“Everybody at home knows somebody affected by CF because it’s so prevalent,” said Dolan, who said his CF-related research allows him to do high-level microbiology that is also clinically relevant.

Dolan working with his collaborators at Georgia Tech have uncovered how two of the most commonly found microbes in the lungs of people with CF, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aspergillus fumigatus, interact molecularly in the lungs they infect.

“Cystic fibrosis results in a wide range of challenging symptoms which impact the entire body, but repeated lung infections leading to lung damage is the major cause of mortality. It’s mostly bacteria and fungi like Pseudomonas and Aspergillus which are responsible for these infections.” said Dolan.

Dolan, who conducts his research at the Clemson University Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC),  also uncovered a previously unknown toxin detection system that allows the two microbes Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aspergillus fumigatus to co-exist in the sputum in CF lungs.

“It appears that ecologically, over millions of years, these microbes have been growing together in soil and have developed elaborate strategies to compete for space and nutrients, and then when they get into humans, those in-built mechanisms have allowed them to coexist and cause serious infections,” he said.

Dolan is able to conduct his research through the support of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and a Career Transition Award (K22) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Study Abroad

Internships, volunteering, working, studying

Drs. Robert Anholt, Trudy Mackay and Anurag Chaturvedi attended the European Commission sponsored Precision Toxicology meeting in Brussels, Belgium. Dr. Anholt gave a presentation and Dr. Chaturvedi presented a poster. A poster by Center for Human Genetics staff Katelynne Collins, Elisa Howansky, Maria Adonay and Vijay Shankar was also presented.

Dr. Fabio Morgante was invited to give a talk at the Computational and Methodological Statistics Conference to be held at King’s College London, UK this December.

Dr. Hong Luo’s graduate students Xiaotong (Stone) Chen, Zhaohui (Charlie) Chen and Ryan Watts all received travel grants to attend and presnt at the 2024 World Congress on In Vitro Biology Meeting in June.

Graduate students Jeffrey “Spencer” Hatfield andAlp Ummet gave presentations at the Genetics and Epigenetics Cross-Cutting Research Conference of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, MD.

Ph.D. student working with Dr. Fabio Morgante, Chunming Liu’s abstract was selected for a an oral presentation at the American Society for Human Genetics meeting in November 2024.

In July, Dr. Hong Luo presented a talk as the invited speaker at the First World Grassland Conference in Hohhot, China.

Drs. Robert Anholt and Trudy Mackay attended the biannual meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

Three graduate students, Claudia Gonzalez, Arohi Singhal and Jack Talledo presented their research at the 9th Biennial National IDeA Symposium of Biomedical Research Excellence in June.

Dr. Haiying Liang and her team attended the South Carolina Hemlock Festival on April 20, bringing awareness of American chestnut diseases and restoration efforts. Dr. Liang and her students continue this effort with the help of Dr. Hong Luo and his students by educating the public. In addition, they assisted with controlled pollination and planting American chestnut trees at the Chestnut Return farm in Seneca, SC.

Center for Human Genetics staff, Vijay Shankar, Maria Adonay and John Poole organized the annual Clemson University RNA-seq retreat in collaboration with the Clemson University Genomics and Bioinformatics Facility. This three-day instructional workshop had an enrollment of 31 participants and provided an in-depth overview of transcriptomics, from experimental design to analysis and interpretation.

In late April Dr. Stephen Dolan’s lab took part in the Great Strides walk in Greenville to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The Great Strides event brings people with a shared vision together and encourages collaboration, team building and leadership, while taking steps to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis.

Dr. Stephen Dolan published “Convergent evolution in toxin detection and resistance provides evidence for conserved bacterial–fungal interactions” in PNAS.

Dr. Shahid Mukhtar recently published “EccDNA in plant-stress and biotechnological solutions in agriculture” in the journal Trends in Biology.

Ph.D. student with Dr. Jim Morris, Sabrina Pizarro published her work in JoVE titled “Measuring Dynamic Glycosomal pH Changes in Living Trypanosoma brucei.“

Dr. Trudy Macaky published two articles, among colleagues:

• “Tsc2 coordinates neuroprogenitor differentiation,” with Center for Human Genetics (CHG) staff Vijay Shankar, Kaitlyn Williams and Rachel Ann Lyman.
• “Ex vivo gene editing and cell therapy for hereditary tyrosinemia type 1,”
  with CHG staff Vijay Shankar, Rachel Ann Lyman and Sidney Angner.

Post doctoral fellow working with Dr. Jim Morris, Dr. Jillian Mckeon’s work, “Enolase inhibitors as therapeutic leads for Naegleria fowleri infection,” was recently accepted for publicaton in PLOS Pathogens.

Dr. Hong Luo’s graduate student Xiaotong (Stone) Chen published a first-author article in the high-impact journal, Plant Biotechnology, titled “MicroRNA169 integrates multiple factors to modulate plant growth and abiotic stress responses.”

“FBH1-deficiency sensitizes cells to WEE1 inhibition by promoting mitotic catastrophe” ws published by Dr. Jennifer Mason in DNA Repair. 

Drs. Robert Anholt and Trudy Macaky published three articles togerther, among colleagues:

• “Drosophila melanogaster mating behavior”
• “The genetic basis of incipient sexual isolation in Drosophila melanogaster”
• “Pleiotropy, epistasis, and the genetic architecture of quantitative traits”

Dr. Liang’s Ph.D. student Sky Lu, published two papers on adventitious root formation: Integrating histology and phytohormone/metabolite profiling to understand rooting in yellow camellia cuttings and Histology of Adventitious Root Formation and Phytohormone Analysis of American Chestnut Cuttings.

Dr. Stephen Dolan’s article, “Convergent evolution in toxin detection and resistance provides evidence for conserved bacterial–fungal interactions,” was published in PNAS. 

Arohi Singhal, Ph.D. student in Dr. Kerry Smith’s lab, placed 1st in Clemson’s iGRADS competition, which aims to help graduate students effectively communicate their research to an audience. In addition, she received the People’s Choice Award. 

Dr. Haiying Laing was presented a Clemson University Library Open Access Publishing Fund Award earlier this summer for her article “Histology of Adventitious Root Formation and Phytohormone Analysis of American Chestnut Cuttings,” published in the Journal of Environmental Horticulture.

Senior biochemistry student Ryan Mehlem was part of a group that won the Pay it Forward competition, sponsored by South Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives.

Dr. Stephen Dolan appointed as a member of the Editorial Board of Microbiology.

Sabrina Pizarro was awarded a Graduate Translational Research Assistantship for Fall ’24/Spring ’25 that will provide a research assistantship and enable the addition of a translational component to her project in collaboration with the Clemson University Research and Education in Disease Diagnosis and Intervention (REDDI) Lab.

Dr. Hong Luo received the 2024 President’s Award from the Society for In Vitro Biology at their annual meeting in June. 

Josh Turner, a Ph.D student in Dr. Jennifer Mason’s lab, received a travel award from the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society  to attend the annual meeting in Palm Springs, CA

Teaching Lab Manager Bradley Rauh recieved the 2024 Outstanding Department Safety Coordinator Award from Clemson University’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Safety.

Graduate student with Dr. Haiying Laing Sky Lu received two awards, the Hope E. Hopps Award and the SIVB Student Travel Award. These assisted her in traveling to present her research in the 2024 World Congress on In Vitro Biology Conference.

Staff scientist Vijay Shankar received the inaugural Award of Excellence from the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics.

Dr. Jim Morris received the 2024 University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAAA). The URSAAA Awards serve as a platform to acknowledge and commend the rare career milestones achieved by Clemson University faculty members.

Dr. Hong Luo’s grant proposal to the USDA-NIFA was funded with a total of $650,000 for four years starting on September 1, 2024.

Drs. Trudy Mackay (contact PI) and Robert Anholt (co-PI) were awarded $170,000 for their grant, “Genetic modifiers of Sanfilippo A and B in Drosophila” by the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation.

Dr. Shahid Mukhtar is part of a $6 million grant from The National Science Foundation to fund his study of how heat and drought affect soybeans.