BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

This past year saw major physical changes in the biology facility. The Unified Science Center is fast becoming a reality and the biology building has been vacated for renovation over the course of the next year to fully integrate the old with the new.
The Biology Department continues its tradition of strong course offerings and research opportunities. This past year saw a record number of honors theses with 28 students, 12 of whom received Highest Honors for outstanding performance on the senior thesis. The department has a total of 125 junior and senior majors for 1999-2000 academic year.
Each year at graduation, the Biology Department awards prizes to five outstanding majors. We are pleased to announce that this year’s recipients were Kate Dreher ‘99, who received the Conant-Harrington Prize for exemplary performance in the biology major; Jennifer Pogoriler ‘99 and Kevin Bolduc ‘99, who were awarded respectively, the First and Second Benedict Prize for excellence in biology; Jennifer DeNiro ‘99, who received the Dwight Prize as the ranking student in botany; and Sylvia Englund ‘99, who was awarded the Grant Prize for the student demonstrating excellence in a broad range of areas in biology. Twelve students were nominated for induction into Sigma Xi, the national research society.
Karen Theiling, who for the past several years did an excellent job as part-time instructor in the introductory and physiology laboratories, has resigned her position to embark upon a new career in the field of psychological counseling and has accepted a position here at Williams. While we will miss her many contributions to the department, we wish her well in her new endeavor.
Gretchen Meyer has accepted a research/forest management position at the University of Wisconsin and will be leaving at the end of June. We wish her great success in this new role.

Dan Suver’99 and Ayesha Johnson’99 at the Biology Senior Honors Poster Presentation

This past year, Prof. Altschuler taught BIOL 132, Human Biology and Social Issues in the fall and BIOL 306, Advanced Molecular Genetics in the spring. Work continues in Professor Altschuler’s lab on projects directed toward elucidating the genome organization of the ciliated protozoan, Tetrahymena thermophila. Inna Hughes ‘99 and Anh Nguyen ‘99 worked on developing vectors and methods to be used in a “chromosome fragmentation” protocol for determining the position of cloned DNA sequences within Tetrahymena somatic chromosomes. Kian Peng Koh ‘99 adapted a 2-D gel electrophoretic procedure for mapping replication origins on chromosomes. Leah Doret ‘99 developed a PCR-based method for obtaining DNA sequences located near the ends of chromosomes.
During the 98-99 academic year Prof. Henry Art taught BIOL 220, Field Botany and Plant Natural History and ENVI 302, Environmental Planning and Design Workshop. He also took part in the Hoosic River Watershed Association’s Scientists and Artists in the Classroom Project. Prof. Art was awarded a Mellon Grant for technology in the classroom to further develop electronic media for BIOL 220, and is developing a web page for the Hopkins Memorial Forest with Harin Tantongsirisak ‘00. He is currently Director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College and serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee, Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station, Rensselaerville, New York. Prof. Art also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Ecosystem Science Semester Program at the Ecosystem Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA. He was awarded the 1998 Educator Award by the New England Wild Flower Society and was a contributor to the book Wildflower Gardens, pp 6-12 “A Gardener’s Ecology,” Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Brooklyn, NY.
Associate Professor Dan Lynch continued as Chair of the Department, and taught BIOL 412, Biochemical Regulatory Mechanisms and BIOL 322, Biochemistry II. Professor Lynch continued his research on plant sphingolipid biochemistry, funded by grants from the NSF and the NIH, and supervised the Honors projects of Julie Cantatore ‘99 and Yuneng Li ‘99. He published a paper, with Pam Bromley ‘98, titled “The Structure and Synthesis of Inositolphosphorylceramides in Plants.” Professor Lynch served as a reviewer for the NSF and for a number of journals.
With funding from Williams’ Mellon Project, Assistant Professor Wendy Raymond and Huei Wong ‘99 developed a multi-faceted website for BIOL 202, Genetics, which served 95 students in that fall course. Check it out at http://hector.williams.edu/biology/courses/biol202/. During Winter Study, eight sophomores and two first-year students got hands-on, feet-first experience with laboratory research in cell-cycle regulation in Raymond’s course Research in Molecular Genetics. Six of these students subsequently garnered paid summer research positions in laboratories across the country, fantastic accomplishments for students at such early stages of their scientific education. Raymond also supervised Samantha Grant’s independent Winter Study project, “Scanning Electron Microscopy Photography,” which was completed under the direction of our EM technician Nancy Piatczyc (http://wso.williams.edu/~sgrant/SEM.htm).
In the spring, Professor Raymond taught BIOL 313, Immunology, with 45 students in this lecture and lab course.
Raymond’s research program continued to probe the molecular relationships between two particular genes important for the resolution of mitosis. During the summer of 1998, Sylvia Englund ‘99, Michael Hurwitz ‘00, Amy Patterson ‘99, and Melissa Schmidt ‘99 kept the lab hopping. Raymond gave a talk summarizing the work of previous thesis students at the Yeast Genetics and Molecular BIOL Meeting, an international conference with 1000 participants. During the academic year, Sylvia Englund ‘99 and Amy Patterson ‘99 completed honors theses under Raymond’s direction, and Melissa Schmidt ‘99 worked as an independent study student.
This past year Nancy Roseman team-taught the introductory biology course (BIOL 101) with Professor Laskowski. In the spring semester she taught BIOL 314, Virology, a course that the department offered for the first time in three years. Professor Roseman had three honors students who made substantial progress working on projects funded by her NSF grant. Kevin Bolduc ‘99 and Ayesha Johnson ‘99 used temperature sensitive mutants of a vaccinia virus protein kinase to determine whether the vaccinia enzyme dUTPase is a substrate for these kinases. Jennifer Pogoriler ‘99 engineered a vaccinia dUTPase mutant by using a dominant selectable marker combined with a color screen gene. This summer, Prof. Roseman and Prof. Lovett of Chemistry will again share a Merck Fellow, Maywa Montenegro, who will be doing kinetic analysis of dUTPase.
This past year, Professor Robert Savage taught BIOL 301, Developmental Biology, and a senior seminar course entitled Topics in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology. He and Denise Buell (Religion Department) introduced a new course during the Winter Study term entitled In the Beginning? Scientific and Religious Speculation on Human Origins, in which students examined a range of theories on the origins and development of life from Aristotle to Darwin. Prof. Savage was an honors thesis advisor for Janet Iwasa ‘99, Daniel Suver ‘99 and Arianna Sainz ‘99. Janet and Dan presented their thesis work at the annual Northeast Regional Development Biology meeting held at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Arianna initiated a study examining segmental pattern formation in a basal polychaete Capitella.
Prof. Savage was awarded a three year grant from the National Institutes of Health to support his continuing research on pattern formation in annelids. He also was an invited instructor for the course Neurobiology and Development of the Leech, offered at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. The course was designed for graduate students, postdoctoral students and independent investigators interested in applying diverse experimental approaches to the study of the nervous system and the development of the leech. Prof. Savage served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation and for two textbooks published by McGraw-Hill and Blackwell Science.
Assistant professor Steve Swoap taught BIOL 309, Mammalian Molecular Physiology and laboratories that accompanied the introductory biology course (BIOL 101) in the fall and BIOL 205, Physiology in the spring. Prof. Swoap also taught a new Winter Study class, Science in Sports, with Daniel Aalberts of the Physics Department. He was the honors thesis advisor for John Haney ‘99 and Deborah Van Allen ‘99. Haney was a co-author on a poster presentation at the Experimental Biology meetings in Washington, D.C. in April. Swoap also had three independent study students in his laboratory - Nilesh Kansagra ‘99, Margaret Genovisi ‘99, and Leigh Olmstead ‘99. Swoap served as a reviewer for the Journal of Applied Physiology. In addition, he coordinated the outreach program funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute, with Vanessa Alvarez ‘00 working in his laboratory three weeks. Swoap gave a guided tour through the heart to three classes of 6th graders from the local elementary school. This coming academic year Prof. Swoap will be offering a new non-majors course, Biology of Exercise and Nutrition.
Associate Professor Heather Williams taught the Animal Behavior course in the fall of 1998. This course was reconfigured as a Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills course, and as such was featured in the annual President’s Report. In the spring she participated in teaching the second semester of the introductory biology sequence, and with Gretchen Meyer, co-taught a Winter Study course entitled The Naturalist’s Winter.
Denise Connor and Brett Linck completed honors theses in Williams’ lab, working on, respectively, mechanisms for adult plasticity in zebra finch song and central and peripheral responses to injuries of the nerves supplying the vocal organ. Examples of the songs analyzed as part of this work can be viewed at the Zebra Finch Song Archive, a resource that is being used by other researchers around the country. (http://wso.williams.edu/~hwilliam/ZFsongs/)
With Neil Mehta (‘95), Williams published “Changes in Adult Zebra Finch Song Require a Forebrain Nucleus That Is Not Necessary for Song Production” in the Journal of Neurobiology.
Prof. Williams presented her work at the Bird Song Workshop at Vassar College, and at the Rockefeller University Field Research Center. She served as a reviewer for several professional journals and for the NSF, and continued as a member of a review panel for the National Institutes of Health.
Prof. Zottoli was on leave this academic year. He continued to administer the 1996 Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant to Williams College. The research interests of his laboratory to focus on the neural basis of behavior and responses of the nervous system to injury, work that is supported as part of a NIH program project grant to MCP Hahnemann University. His laboratory was visited by Christopher Reeve after graduation. Stephanie Min and Xiao Tan ‘02 had the opportunity to discuss recent regeneration research with Mr. Reeve.
While on sabbatical, Prof. Steve Zottoli continued to direct a Williams College program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA during the months of July and August. Dafina Brody ‘01, Anthony Ndirango ‘00, Biniam Gebre ‘00, Gina Parra ‘99, and Boudhayan Sen ‘00 participated in this program. It included reading papers of various scientists in residence at the MBL, meeting with each scientist to discuss the papers and career path issues and then conducting a laboratory exercise that related to the scientist’s area of interest. In addition, students had the opportunity to attend course lectures and evening lectures. Finally, students were able to conduct original research on identified neurons in fish.
Bridie Newman ‘95, Heather Rieff ‘93 and Chris Winters ‘95 were co-authors on an article entitled: “Decrease in Occurrence of Fast Startle Responses after Selective Mauthner Cell Ablation in Goldfish (Carassius auratus) published in J. Comp. Physiol. A. He attended the Society for Neuroscience meeting held in Los Angeles with Biniam Gebre ‘00 and presented a poster entitled: “Behavioral Recovery of Fast Startle Responses after Spinal Cord Crush in Goldfish Can Occur in The Absence of Mauthner Cells” that was co-authored with Deborah Feiner ‘94, John Hering ‘94 and Don Faber.

Class of 1960 Scholars in Biology

Erin Davies Randall Lindquist
Veena Mandava Caren Mintz
Jillian Pesin Aya Reiss
Kevin Stephans Zuzana Tothova
Andrew Werbrock Matt Wessler

BIOLOGY COLLOQUIA

Dr. Sarah Assmann, Penn State University, Williams Class of ‘80
“Guard Cell Signal Transduction”
Dr. Anthony Conley, Merck Foundation
“Protective Immunity and HIV-1: What Are Virus Neutralizing Antibodies and What Do We Learn From Studying Them?”
Dr. Carol Greider, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
BIMO Class of 1960 Scholar
“Telomeres, Telomerase and Cancer”
Dr. Steven Horsley, US Forest Service
“Evaluating Plant-Plant Interference Between Hay Scented Fern and Black Cherry”
Dr. Kimberly Mowry, Brown University
“Transport of RNA and Protein in Xenopus Eggs and Oocytes”
Dr. P. Darrell Neufer, Yale University
“Metabolic Regulation of Gene Expression in Skeletal Muscle”
Dr. Barbara Sollner-Webb, Johns Hopkins University
BIMO Class of 1960 Scholar
“RNA Editing, The Most Bizarre Kind of Eukaryotic RNA Maturation”
Dr. Ilaria Rebay, Whitehead Institute
“Ras/MAPK Signaling During Development: A View From the Yan Gene of Drosophila”
Dr. David Schneider, Whitehead Institute
“Using Drosophila as a Model Vector for Malaria”
Dr. Billie Swalla, Penn State University
“Development and Evolution of the Chordates: Insights into Vertebrate Origins”
Dr. Gregory Wray, SUNY, Stony Brook
Class of 1960 Scholar
“New Roles for Old Genes: The Evolution of Gene Regulatory Systems in Echinoderms”

OFF-CAMPUS COLLOQUIA

Henry W. Art
“Past as Prolog: A History of the Hopkins Forest,” Alumni Seminar, Oct. 1998.
“Wildflower Recolonization,” Old Growth Forest Conference-Harvest Forest, Nov. 1998
(with Jody Knight’98).
Conway School of Landscape Design – Project Jury, Nov. 1998.
“Naïve Wildflowers,” New England Wildflower Society, April 1999
Wendy Raymond
“Exit from Mitosis is Regulated by sfpl, an Allele-dependent Suppressor of cdc14’
1998 Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology Meeting, College Park, Maryland.

POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF BIOLOGY MAJORS

Michael Alcee Fordham University Graduate School (clinical psychology).
Paul Alsdorf Working for Mercer Management Consulting, Boston, then medical or graduate school.
Ernesto Andrianantoandro
Sabrina Assoumou
Marc Barreda
Trevor Bayliss
Kevin Bolduc Consulting for The Parthenon Group, Boston for 2 years, then biology graduate school.
Maureen Brudzinski Health care education in Africa with the Peace Corp.
Julie Cantatore Medical School, SUNY Stony Brook
Elizabeth Claflin Teaching in a volunteer program in Los Angeles and taking grad. school classes in education.
Denise Connor
Brandon Davidson
Edie DeNiro
Leah Doret Working at Mass. General Hospital for a year as a clinical research assistant, then medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine.
Kate Dreher
Sylvia Englund Studying rain forest biology for a year in Costa Rica on a Watson Fellowship.
David Finkelstein Working as a Research Technician at Harvard Medical School Children’s Hospital studying the genetics of cancer
Tracy Foose
Kristin France Summer student fellowship for marine ecology research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute then grad school in a year.
Elissa Hallem Yale University Graduate School (neuroscience).
John Haney Masters in Public Health at Boston University then medical school.
Brooke Harnisch
Trudy Harper
Brian Hennessey Working for a consulting firm.
Timothy Holmberg
Inna Hughes Washington University School of Medicine, M.D./Ph.D. Program.
Colby Hunter-Thompson Volunteer work in New York City and applying to medical school.
Emily Hyle Teaching at Lawrence Academy in Groton, MA.
Jonathan Ilgen
Janet Iwasa UCSF Graduate School
Simaria Jemison
Ayesha Johnson
Nilesh Kansagra Teach for America for 2 years, then Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Daphne King Research Technician at Children’s Hospital, Boston.
Emily King One-year intern position at Mass. Watershed Initiative in Wilmington.
Kian Peng Koh Yale University Graduate School.
Yuneng Li Applying to medical school.
Katherine Liao IT Environmental Consultant with American Management Systems in Washington, DC, then applying to medical school.
Brett Linck
Tyson Matsumoto
Sarah Moline
David Neubert University of Rochester Medical School.
Jennifer Newton
Andrew Nguyen Peace Corps
Kim Nguyen UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
Zachary Niman Working at the Center for Hemostasis and Thrombosis at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston with Dr. David Roth.
Leigh Olmsted Teaching 9th grade biology at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, CT for one year.
T. OsbourneRoberts
Jonathan Pak
Georgina Parra
Amy Patterson
Charles Pogemiller
Jennifer Pogoriler Working for a year as Part-time Lab Instructor in Biology at Williams College.
Julie Rusczek
Ariana Sainz Teaching high school science in New Jersey.
Melissa Schmidt
Andrea Slate
Timothy Stoddard Boston University – Science Journalism Masters Program.
Nicole Strauss
Daniel Suver
Tiffany Talley
Elyse Vaccaro
Deborah Van Allen
Graham Wehmeier
Matthew Whalin
Christine Whitcraft Wetlands research with the Nature Conservancy in Delaware and Maryland, then undecided.
Christina Williams
Elizabeth Willmott Williams-in-China Fellow at Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong for 2 years and will pursue a career in science journalism.
Huei Wong