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Symposium impresses student researchers
Seniors Nate LeMay and Justin Rosenberg and juniors Emily Ricketson and Curren Mbofana researched green fluorescent jellyfish protein last summer with Professor Marc Zimmer.
February 09, 2007
On their way back to campus from winter break, four students took a detour and headed to San Jose, Calif., to attend an international photochemistry and medical imaging conference where they discussed the behavior of green fluorescent jellyfish protein (GFP).
Seniors Nate LeMay and Justin Rosenberg and juniors Emily Ricketson and Curren Mbofana had researched GFP over the summer under the direction of Marc Zimmer, Barbara Zaccheo Kohn ´72 professor of chemistry, who also attended the conference and large, day-long "SPIE West BiOS 2007-International Biomedical Optics Symposium."
As part of the symposium, Zimmer gave a lecture on the latest developments with GFP and the new ability to enhance the fluorescent behavior of the protein by making it brighter and appear faster. Recognized as an expert in his field, he published Glowing Genes: A Revolution in Biotechnology in 2005, the first popular science book on jellyfish proteins. Jellyfish proteins can be used to help fight cancer, create new products, improve agriculture and even help combat terrorism.
While researching with Zimmer during the summer, the students used advanced computer programs to predict the molecular structures of different GFPs.
"Working in a research environment was a very rewarding experience," LeMay said. "It really helped create a better understanding of why GFP glows like it does. We were on the brink of discovering new things every day, which was very exciting."
Despite being the only undergraduate students among more than 4000 industry professionals and post-graduate scholars at the conference, LeMay had the opportunity to present research from his honors thesis.
"You could tell there were a lot of bigwig professionals from the chemistry world walking around the conference and when I presented my poster, they asked me lots of questions," he said. "These are people who use GFP in their daily work, as a marker in animal and human systems. So it was interesting to see the difference in perspective for someone that may be doing work with GFP but may not necessarily understand how it works."
Ricketson enjoyed the conference because of the emphasis it put on realistic applications for GFP. "It was very heavily based on the medical and optics fields," she said. "So we could see how these computer programs are actually applied to the real world. For example, it was really interesting to see how you are able to monitor the growth of cancerous tumors by labeling them with GFP."
The entire trip was funded as part of a larger Emerging Areas in Science grant from the Keck Foundation. The $500,000 grant involves taking new and developing fields in science and making them more well known. To publicize his work with GFP, Zimmer has built a Web site released several iTunes podcasts and plans on making an interactive CD.
For Zimmer, the conference also presented an opportunity to collaborate with fellow researchers. "I met a professor from the University of Alberta there and we are starting collaboration," he said.
For more information contact: Amy Sullivan (860) 439-2526; amy.sullivan@conncoll.edu