Hao Wang, a biomedical sciences graduate student at the Florida State University College of Medicine, has published a manuscript in the October issue of PLOS ONE, an international, open-access, peer-reviewed scentific journal.

Wang's article, "The Role of LARP6 and Nonmuscle Myosin in Partitioning of Collagen mRNAs to the ER Membrane," was produced in the lab of Professor Branko Stefanovic.

 

 The FSU College of Medicine (CoM) has adopted policies for carrying out human subjects research by faculty, staff, students and others affiliated with the College. The policies establish a centralized, faculty-based review process for CoM-affiliated human subjects research. They were developed by a collaboration of department chairs and faculty members, with approval from the dean and the College of Medicine executive committee.

The internal review process is a necessary step approximately two to three weeks prior to submitting a new College of Medicine-affiliated human subjects research proposal to the FSU Institutional Review Board (IRB). IRB renewals and amendments are not required to go through the review process, only first submissions. In research involving external funding, the process will not impede or delay sponsor applications.

Information about the process

College of Medicine-affiliated investigators may access the review process via online submission using our SharePoint Intranet. You can access the intranet site with your College of Medicine user name and password by clicking on this link:

Online submission form

A step-by-step “user guide” for investigators on how to navigate the online submission system is located on the SharePoint Intranet site.
 

Biomedical Sciences Researcher Raed Rizkallah, Ph.D., and Senior Associate Dean Myra Hurt, Ph.D., received U.S. Patent 8,829,160 B1, for their work, “Antibody Biomarker Specific for Mitotic Cells and Related Methods,” which helps determine when a cell is in the mitotic state.

A paper from the lab of Associate Professor Daniel Kaplan has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper, "The Dbf4-Cdc7 kinase promotes Mcm2-7 ring opening to allow for single-stranded DNA extrusion and helicase assembly," was written by Kaplan and Assistant Scholar Scientist Irina Bruck. Both authors work in the College of Medicine's Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Nearly 150 eighth- through 10th-graders from five counties across Florida earned their CPR certification Jan. 23 as participants in the Florida State University College of Medicine’s SSTRIDE program. SSTRIDE (Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence) was developed in 1994 by Outreach and Advising Director Thesla Berne-Anderson to increase primary care physician talent in rural and underserved areas in Florida through classroom and after-school teaching.

Physician hopefuls from Leon, Gadsden, Madison, Okaloosa and Orange counties gathered in FSU’s Oglesby Union classrooms – a first-time college experience for some – to be trained using head-and-chest “manikins.” With the guidance of instructor Barry Hartin of the Southeastern School of Health Sciences, and hands-on assistance from the Leon County Emergency Medical Services team, students conducted chest compressions and breaths, used an automated external defibrillator and learned the Heimlich maneuver.

Eager to practice their new skills, students had such questions as whether they could injure someone inadvertently or whether they should check for a pulse before administering CPR. After completing the course, students received CPR certification from the American Heart Association to take back to their respective counties, where Hartin encouraged them to “go for it.”

Listen to an FSU Headlines interview with Thesla Berne-Anderson.

Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences Yi Zhou is one of the co-authors of a paper accepted for publication in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper is "14-3-3τ Promotes Surface Expression of Cav2.2(α1B) Ca2+ Channels." Corresponding author Yong Li and the nine other co-authors are all from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China.

Three faculty members from the Florida State University College of Medicine will lead a public discussion of the influenza virus the evening of Feb. 9. Topics will include the biology of the virus, its treatment and its prevention. A question-and-answer session also will take place. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Speakers include:

• Claudia Blackburn, MPH, RNC, CPM, health officer from the Florida Department of Health and assistant professor in the medical school’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.
• Ricardo Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., professor and chair, Department of Clinical Sciences.
• David Meckes, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences.

If you’re planning to attend the FSU College of Medicine’s Summer Institute, don’t delay: The application deadline is March 5.

The Summer Institute is a one-week residential program on the campus of Florida State University designed for students who are committed to pursuing a career in the medical field.

Among other things, the program:

• Motivates students to excel academically.
• Introduces students to a variety of clinical settings.
• Provides standardized test preparation for ACT and SAT.
• Provides information about scholarships and university mentoring programs.
• Exposes students to college life.
• Gives students a perspective on the life of a medical student.
• Exposes students to certain aspects of the medical school curriculum through interaction with faculty and participation in faculty-led presentations about medical topics.
• And inspires students to pursue careers in health-care professions.

For details, visit the Summer Institute web page.
 

Less than a year after finishing her undergraduate degree and winning a McKnight Fellowship, first-year biomedical doctoral student Connie Tenorio is winning again. This time, for art.

Tenorio took part in the annual ‘Art in STEM Research’ exhibit, where photographs taken by FSU students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields who successfully capture the artistic beauty of scientific research in digital images, are displayed in the Dirac Science Library. The artistic scientist with the winning image is awarded a $50 prize.

A graduate student in the Blaber lab, Tenorio won for her "X-ray crystal structure of a designed ‘pre-biotic’ protein," which she worked on with fellow graduate student Liam Longo. Her background helped. Tenorio studied the history of art during her undergraduate career and has a strong appreciation for the art of science.

"Creativity is integral to a successful career in science," said Tenorio. "Finding the beauty in your own scientific research is one of the many joys in this line of work. The Art in STEM Research exhibit was an outreach event geared toward getting undergraduates interested in science, not by the usual technical description of research, but by using images of what each person finds beautiful about their science.

"The image Liam and I submitted is the crystal structure of one of the proteins we work on in our lab called PV2. It was obtained using X-ray crystallography, a technique used to visualize the structure of biopolymers, such as proteins. This particular protein adopts a beta-trefoil fold, which is characterized by its symmetric structure. In the center of this crystal structure is another symmetric molecule, Tris, which is used to regulate pH during crystallization conditions. Tris highlights and compliments the symmetry of PV2. A component of beauty has always been symmetry, which is all around us in nature. In fact one third of all proteins are symmetric.

"Importantly, PV2 is comprised predominately of molecular building blocks that were present on the early Earth, before the emergence of life. These molecular building blocks, called amino acids, can be generated by lightning, in hydrothermal vents, or delivered by meteorites. The fact that we were able to create a beta-trefoil using only the “old” amino acids, suggests that the chemical information on the early earth—even before the advent of life itself—was sufficient to create useful molecular tools that are still used by living organisms."

First-year students Kathryn Barbon and Alexia Loyless recently had dinner with a physician-intern who was 5,000 miles from home – and who made quite an impression on them.

Kateryna Telehina (pictured right), who visited the College of Medicine in February, is finishing her medical training in a small town near Kiev, while pursuing a
graduate degree in public health and lobbying the Ukrainian parliament for health-care reform. But she must be innovative with the resources available to her.

“They’re lacking in equipment for training both for education and health-care delivery,” said Senior Associate Dean Myra Hurt, who joined them at the dinner. “They have great needs. Kateryna said they have a lot of people in the practice of health care, but they don’t have the latest cutting-edge equipment and medicines.”

Telehina, 24, was accepted for an exchange program for post-Soviet countries through the Open World Leadership Center. She was among seven delegates pursuing health-care reform in Ukraine accepted for the U.S. trip, with stops in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee. Their FSU activities were arranged by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), whose Friendship Force International volunteers hosted the delegates. Telehina has traveled to several European countries and the United Arab Emirates, but this was her first experience in the States.

“She was talking to us about her visit to the college the entire time,” said Barbon. “She kept saying, ‘You guys are so lucky.’ It made me really grateful for being able to go to school here.”

The students and Hurt observed Telehina’s repeated observations about technological disparities.

“We have the idea that people over there have universal health care,” said Hurt, “but the care is different from what we have. I think they have a lot of people that are trained in the finer arts – listening and the healing arts – but they don’t necessarily have all the technology that we have.”

While appreciative of technology, Loyless also saw the advantages of Telehina’s training.

“They’re more trained with their ears and their hands and their eyes,” said Loyless. “They’re very intuitive in that way. Kateryna said they don’t have the manikins to hear heart murmurs, so they have to figure it out on their own. It benefits her.”

They also noticed what Telehina did not talk about.

“Ukraine is a place that I read about every day in the newspaper that has this horrible sectarian violence going on, and the Russians are taking advantage of that,” said Hurt. “And here’s this young woman who works in a little town delivering health care near Kiev. That disconnect between knowing what was going on in her country, and this very normal person who cares a lot about her profession, struck me. I was kind of awed.”