Students present science research projects

The CSC students who presented information about their work in the research program, commonly referred to as INBRE, are Riley Machal of Gretna, who presented her research on Cytomegalovirus (“Innate Immune Responses to Cytomegalovirus in Macrophages”), Nisha Durand of Salisbury, Dominica, who presented a poster on her bioinformatics research (“A Comprehensive Analysis of Degenerate Amino Acids in Bacterial Proteins”), and Kathryn Score of Elgin, who presented a poster on the effects of the fungal toxin Fumonisin on fetal development (“Gestational Fumonisin Exposure and Neural Tube Defects: Exploring Potential Mechanisms”).

The three students will continue to work on research projects during the 2010-2011 school year. Machal will research Streptococcus epidermidis with biology faculty member Dr. Wendy Jamison. Score will work on an ongoing project with Dr. Ann Buchmann to characterize alkaline lake bacteria, and Durand will determine whether extracts from plant material contain antibiotics that will kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

INBRE provides funding for students to do research projects for two years during their junior and senior years of college. During the school years, the students work with faculty members at Chadron State while summers are spent in research laboratories at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln or Omaha, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, or at Creighton University in Omaha.

Machal is a junior and in her first year of the INBRE program while Score is in her second year. Durand took part in a summer bioinformatics course linked to the INBRE program.