Month: January 2025

Fascinated by the vastness of the universe, as a child senior biochemistry major Adam Gatch was intrigued by how the physics of the very small could be used to explain the astronomically large.

“I’ve always been captivated by the study of life at the molecular level,” said Gatch. “It’s remarkable to learn how disease at the macroscopic level can be understood through the underlying physics and chemistry governing cells and molecules.”

Adam has been awarded the 2025 Churchill Scholarship, which allows students to undertake a one-year master’s program in STEM fields at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

With the scholarship, Adam plans to pursue a master of philosophy in chemistry and work with professor Tuomas Knowles at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Misfolding Diseases, a leading research center dedicated to understanding the abnormal behavior of proteins in the brain in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Adam’s research on campus is began when he approached Dr. Feng Ding from the Department of Physics and Astronomy about joining his biophysics research lab. Adam’s research has mainly focused on understanding the abnormal aggregation of disease-associated proteins and how interactions between different proteins contribute to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Adam has also researched Parkinson’s Disease when he spent the summer before his sophomore year at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), researching how neuroimaging could be used to predict how patients suffering from the disease might respond to a specific drug therapy, a project that was supported by an application Gatch wrote — and won — for a $10,000 National Institutes of Health Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Grant Supplement.

His work has earned him several other scholarships, honors and awards, including a 2024 Goldwater scholarship.

Aside from academics, Adam volunteers at the campus food pantry, serves as a member of the College of Science Student Advisory Board, acts as a tutor at the University’s Academic Success Center, and works as an EMT.

“It’s a great honor to win the Churchill Scholarship. I’m very excited to work with one of the most prominent researchers within my field in the world,” said Gatch. “The Knowles lab is a perfect fit for me, and there is no better environment for my continued growth as a young researcher.”

The Churchill Scholarship is seen as the most prestigious and competitive international science, mathematics and engineering award for post-undergraduate researchers. Adam was one of only 16 students nationwide to receive the award and his award makes Clemson the only university whose students have been awarded a Churchill Scholarship in each of the last three years.

Senior genetics major, Truman and National Scholar Elizabeth Caldwell was invited to give a Ted Talk at TEDxClemsonU’s Innovate to Elevate event on August 24, 2024.

TEDxClemsonU’s Innovate to Elevate event aimed to catalyze a culture of innovation, collaboration, and positive change within the university community, empowering individuals to elevate their ideas, aspirations, and impact on the world.

The title of Elizabeth’s talk was “Now You See Me: Recognizing Invisible and Dynamic Disabilities,” and featured topics of her own disability, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), disabilities as a whole and how society reacts to these disabilities.

“Most often my cane is the first thing people notice about me. And once strangers see me with a cane, they immediately begin making assumptions.”

Elizabeth’s talk resonates with both people with and without disabilities. She encourages those listening to rethink the way we view those with disabilities.

“I believe its time to innovate the way we think about disabilities so that we can elevate the entire disability community and make the world more accessible for all.”

When senior biochemistry major Ruxi Xia was shopping for colleges, she began to get worried that she wouldn’t find the place for her because she wasn’t connecting at any of the campuses she toured at. That all changed when she visited Clemson.

“Clemson felt like home as soon as I stepped on the campus.”

Ruxi is an international student from Wuhan, China that came to the US in high school and lived with a host family. After high school Ruxi was excited to learn that Clemson had a robust biochemistry program.

“I wanted a strong biochemistry program to set me up for success in cancer research as it has been my career choice since one of my family members passed from cancer.”

Now that Ruxi is here, she is grateful to have been exposed to many foundational science courses that she says will set her up for success.

“I enjoy my upper-level professors, who are really passionate about science and have made me a much stronger student.”

Ruxi is not only involved in her routine academics on campus; she is a part of many different extracurricular activities including the Clemson Light Imaging Facility (CLIF).

“I have worked on many independent immunofluorescence staining projects, learned to operate wide-field and confocal microscopes, and coordinated an imaging contest that receives entries from all over the world for that past three years.”

Ruxi also works in a bioengineering lab characterizing peptides to deliver siRNA for RNA interference applications in ovarian cancer, as well as using a 3D spheroid model to better study the tumor and has presented her research at five national conferences.

As a co-director for Clemson Paw Pantry since Spring 2023, Ruxi has enjoyed leading the executive team and spreading awareness for the initiative, tripling both the usage of the pantry and the number of volunteers. Ruxi is also a student tutor at the Academic Success Center and mentor for the Clemson College of Science Mentoring and Inclusion Collaborative (COSMIC).

In addition, Ruxi serves as an active member in student government, as the volunteer/community service coordinator for the Clemson Rotaract Club and as the president of the Clemson Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA).

“I have really enjoyed getting to help out the community whether that is helping at the Clemson Community Care, local farms, and other shelters in the community.”

Ruxi went to high school in Virginia and enjoys baking, cooking and spending time with her friends trying new restaurants and coffee shops. After graduation, Ruxi plans to either pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering or pharmaceutical sciences.

How long ago the bond between dog and man was first formed is something scientists haven’t been able to ascertain.

New research involving Kelsey Witt Dillon, an assistant professor in the Clemson University Department of Genetics and Biochemistry and the Center for Human Genetics, is part of new research that now suggests indigenous people in interior Alaska had formed relationships with the ancestors of today’s dogs near the end of the Ice Age — a time at least 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

“Dogs were the first animal to be domesticated, but it was so long ago that we don’t really know the details of when and how,” said Witt Dillon, a computational biologist and population geneticist whose research focuses on the history of dogs in the Americas. “Any time we come across archeological samples of canids — dogs, wolves or coyotes — we’re interested in learning more about them and their relationship with humans to try to shed light on that.”

The researchers used a database of 111 large canid specimens. Included was the tibia of an adult canine about 12,000 years old and an 8,100-year-old canine jawbone excavated. The scientists determined that the canines from which these two bones came from had regularly eaten salmon, a diet choice that wasn’t typical of canine, who typically hunted land animals for food. Researchers say these dogs likely were fed by humans or scavenged salmon left by humans.

“We have evidence that sometimes people had a very loose association with dogs, where the dogs would be around, but they didn’t have owners and they weren’t being actively managed in any way,” she said. “It was a relationship where the humans had some benefit from the dogs being around, maybe some protection from wolves, and the dogs got food and a bit of safety, too. The pet idea is newer and the breeds as we know them are newer.”

Witt Dillon said the goal of the project was to consider different lines of evidence at once to try get a picture of what human-dog and human-wolf interactions were like.

“We see a lot of evidence of people feeding dogs and taking care of them, and we see this through time. People have valued dogs for thousands of years. I think it’s a cool thing to see that we’ve had this very long, lasting relationship,” she said.

Dr. Witt Dillon’s research has been published in “Late Pleistocene onset of mutualistic human/canid (Canis spp.) relationships in subarctic Alaska.”

Read more and watch the video in the Clemson News article.

Biochemistry alum Dr. Phyllis MacGilvray ’96 became interested in medicine at an early age because of her relationship with her family doctor.

“I have a curious mind and was always asking, ‘Why?’ I found science fascinating because it gave me an avenue to finding answers,” she said. “Medicine was just a natural fit for me.”

In July, the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville named Dr. MacGilvray, a family medicine practitioner of over 20 years, its dean.

Dr. MacGilvray earned her doctor of medicine degree in 2002 from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston before completing her residency in family medicine at the University of Vermont, followed by academic leadership positions at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune and at the University of Texas Health San Antonio.

She then returned home to South Carolina in 2018 to take a position with Prisma Health—Upstate as vice chair for academic affairs in family medicine, becoming department chair in 2020 and leading the development of two new graduate medical education programs, which tripled the number of family medicine residency positions at Prisma.

Dr. MacGilvray will serve as dean for a two-year term – a time in which she plans to bolster the school’s research footprint and elevate the school’s lifestyle medicine mission. She is the first medical school dean in the country who is board-certified in lifestyle medicine, which focuses on using evidence-based lifestyle interventions to prevent, treat and reverse chronic diseases.

“Learning from the very first day of medical school how to educate patients holistically is only going to improve the care of their patients down the line,” Dr. MacGilvray said.

Read more in the Clemson News article.

Considering the world’s growing population and less land being available for farming, it’s becoming more important than ever to increase nutritional quality and crop yield of food crops. One way to achieve this is by genetically modifying a plant by introducing a foreign gene (called a transgene) from another organism, essentially giving the plant a new trait not naturally present in its genome.

This often enhances a plant’s resistance to pests, diseases and environmental stresses, improves its nutritional value. Plant’s traits can also be improved by modifying the genes they already have through gene-editing technology.

However, when foreign genes are introduced into target crops using the transgenic approach or by manipulating endogenous gene expression in target crops using genome editing for trait modification, some unneeded DNA may end up permanently residing in the host genomes of the final transgenic products, which raises questions of potential hazards or adverse effects to the host, environment and human health. Professor Hong Luo and his lab have been studying this genome editing in crops.

“The unnecessary DNA that gets into the transgenic plants with the target gene need to be removed,” says professor Hong Luo.

One way to remove them is by using site-specific DNA recombinases. Site-specific recombinases recognize specific DNA sequences by flanking the desirable gene with target sequences that the recombinase can recognize and excise.

Professor Luo has received a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study these unintended consequences of three site-specific DNA recombination systems commonly used to genetically engineer target crops.

In this study, Luo will study three different recombinase genes — Cre, FLP and PhiC31 — in plants creeping bentgrass and Arabidopsis by investigating whether there are unintended off-target effects to host genomes, epigenomes and phenotypes and whether they negatively or positively affect plant traits and present hazards to the environment.

“This will give us an idea about what aspects those recombinases impact in which particular plant species,” he said.

Read more and watch the video in the Clemson News article.