BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

The Biology Department at Williams, in its constant effort to keep pace with the ever-changing world of the biological sciences, interacts closely with several interdisciplinary programs on campus: the BIMO Program, the Neuroscience Program, the Environmental Studies Program and the newest endeavor, the BiGP Program (Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics). Providing students with the opportunity to do hands-on, one-on-one research with a professor has always been one of the department’s goals in addition to offering state of the art academic courses. This is evidenced by the fact that the department had 18 honors students working in faculty labs this past year. The Biology Department has the highest number ever (65) of students doing research this summer either on campus, at other institutions or abroad. Jared Mayers and Kristina Brumme will be working at the Whitehead Institute. This work will be continued in a month-long study during January. Taryn Goodman will be doing research at Tasmania University and Didem Ilter will be working at University of California San Francisco. Funding for summer research comes from various sources including individual research grants, the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Science Education Grant and Divisional funding. At least half of the biology faculty has outside research funding from either NSF or NIH. This funding also allows many students to travel to professional meetings throughout the year giving poster presentations on their research at Williams. A number of alumni returned to campus this year to share their post-graduate experiences with students. These included former students currently in graduate schools at UMass, UC Davis, UC San Diego, VMI, Stanford and Duke.

The Biology Department welcomes the addition of Visiting Associate Professor Lois Banta to a full-time tenure track position within the department. Lois has been in the department for the past six years in a visiting capacity and has taught many courses including the flagship course for the new BiGP Program. Before coming to Williams, Lois was at Haverford College.

Biology Department Honors Poster Presentations 2006: Gape Machao ’06 explains his research on A. thaliana to Prof. Claire Ting.

Each year at graduation, the Biology Department awards prizes to several outstanding majors, Ian Barbash and Gillian Sowden received the Benedict Prize in Biology. Gillian also received the David Bruce Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award, sponsored by the American Physiological Society. Abby McBride received the Dwight Prize in Botany. Oliver Burton received the Conant-Harrington Prize for exemplary performance in the biology major, and Alana Frost received the Grant Prize for demonstrating excellence in a broad range of areas in biology. Burton also is the recipient of the Hershel Smith Fellowship and will work toward a M.Sc. Degree in Immunology at Cambridge University. Alissa Caron received the William Bradford Turner Citizenship Prize at Commencement in recognition of her numerous community service efforts. Christine Hunt received a Williams in Africa Summer Fellowship to work with the Mothers’ Programme in Cape Town. Kate Majzoub received a Watson Fellowship and will travel to China, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. Ben Brown received the Chandler Fellowship to pursue a documentary film project in South America. Fifteen of our honors students were nominated to the Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.

The Biology Department continued to participate in the Class of 1960 Scholars Program. Several distinguished scientists were invited to meet with students and faculty. Among those invited were Dr. Rachel Ballard-Barbash, National Center Institute; Dr. Daniel Bush, Colorado Sate University; Dr. Susan Michaelis, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Professor Marsha Altschuler taught BIOL 202 Genetics in the fall and a new course, BIOL 416 Epigenetics in the spring semester. Many exciting new epigenetics studies were published during the spring that were incorporated into the BIOL 416 course “hot off the press”--some of these research papers were by Williams alumni! Research continues in the Altschuler lab on the Tetrahymena thermophila chromosome fragmentation project with the goal of understanding how this fascinating single-celled protist organizes and maintains its complicated somatic genome of over 200 chromosomes present in about 50 copies each. In August 2005, Professor Altschuler attended the Ciliate Molecular Biology Conference at Il Ciocco, Lucca, Italy--the new insights and investigations made possible by the sequencing of the Tetrahymena genome were impressive! Jim Prevas ’06 worked for a few weeks in the Altschuler lab during summer 2005 and Alexandra Grier ’06 lent her scientific talents to the Tetrahymena genome studies during the academic year for her honors thesis research project. In February, in conjunction with the Liz Lerman Dance Company performance of Ferocious Beauty: the Genome Project at the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance, Professor Altschuler moderated a "town meeting" at Mass MoCA on the topic of Stem Cell Research, Politics, and Religion along with panel participants State Rep. Dan Bosley and Rabbi Dennis Ross.

Over the past several years Professor Art has taught both the Environmental Planning course (ENVI 302) with Sarah Gardner and the Introduction to Environmental Science course as a team with David Dethier in Geosciences and Jay Thoman in Chemistry. In addition, he developed a new interdisciplinary course, The Natural History of the Berkshires that was taught for the first time in fall 2005. During the past year, Professor Art supervised the theses of Jasmine Smith ’05 (establishing a baseline for Eastern hemlock before the arrival of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid), Abby McBride ’06 (a synthesis of biogeographical research on the distribution of spring ephemeral wildflowers in the region), and Will Wetzel ’06 (the influence of woodlot history on the distribution of soil macroarthropods). In addition he collaborated with Andy Stevenson ’07 on a project funded by the Faculty Center for Technology and Media on visualizing changes in land-use in Williamstown through the construction of time-lapse aerial photographs and collaborated with Kathy Rinehart of the Mount Greylock Regional High School on developing field curricula for the environmental science course taught there. After serving for seven years as the Director of the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies, Professor Art returned to being a full-time member of the Biology Department.

Visiting Associate Professor Lois Banta continued to pursue her National Science Foundation-funded research on the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This plant pathogen is best known for its unique ability to deliver DNA and proteins to host plant cells, thus stably altering the genetic makeup of the plant and causing crown gall tumors to form at the infection site. The transport machinery, comprised of multiple VirB proteins and VirD4, is the prototype for several similar systems required for other clinically important bacteria to cause disease in their mammalian hosts. The goal of the research, funded by the three-year grant, is to investigate the role of two proteins, VirC1 and VirC2, in the regulation of substrate delivery by the VirB/D4 secretion apparatus. One of the honors students in the lab, Oliver Burton ’06, succeeded in purifying the VirC1 protein that the Banta lab has hypothesized plays a role in enhancing the specificity of the transport machinery for the DNA substrate. Oliver elegantly demonstrated biochemically that this purified VirC1 interacts with VirC2. He also discovered that VirC1 binds to ATP and that VirC2 influences VirC1’s affinity for ATP. A second honors student, Esa Seegulam ’06, purified VirC2 and developed a strategy to visualize the location of the DNA to be transferred. With this approach, the lab hopes to confirm the postulate that VirC1 and VirC2 promote DNA delivery by tethering the transferred DNA at the site of the VirB/D4 transport apparatus. Summer student Shannon Chiu ’08 used recombinant DNA technologies to engineer bacterial cells to produce the VirC2 used in these experiments and also worked on demonstrating that VirC1 has ATPase activity. Independent Study student and WCURF fellow Jessica Davis ’06 pursued a project she had started the previous summer, investigating a possible role for host plant endocytosis in virulence factor uptake. A visiting summer student from Bennett College, Danai Musarurwa, followed up on the thesis work of Meghan Giuliano ’05, exploring a novel mechanism for regulation of transcription of a subset of the virB genes. Finally, Oliver Burton completed a project initiated by 16 students in Professor Banta’s Microbiology course during the spring of 2005. The Banta lab is part of a consortium dedicated to an NSF-funded project to sequence and annotate the genomes of two additional Agrobacterium biovars with distinct host-range specificities, genomic organization, and phylogenetic relationships. Hypothesizing that host range and ability to incite host defense responses might depend in part on cell surface properties, the students collectively defined at a genomic level the pathway for exopolysaccharide biosynthesis in A. tumefaciens and A. vitis. Six students from the Banta Lab presented posters at the 26th Annual Crown Gall Meeting in August 2005.

In the fall term, Professor Banta taught a new lab-intensive capstone course for the BiGP (Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics) Program, in which computational analysis and wet-lab investigations inform each other, as students majoring in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics/statistics, and physics contribute their own expertise to explore how ever-growing gene and protein data-sets can provide key insights into human disease. The course focuses on one model system, the Ras/MAPK signal transduction pathway, and its role in the development of colon cancer. The well-studied and highly conserved Ras-related family of proteins plays a central role in numerous fundamental processes within the cell. Database searching, comparative genomics, sequence alignments/phylogenetics and pattern matching analyses of the Ras supergene family, as well as hierarchical analysis of microarray data, were used to teach the students not just how to use the tools available, but how and why the underlying algorithms work the way they do. Macroarray analysis of gene expression patterns in three different human colon tumor cell lines provided a foundation for students to design their own experiments employing immunofluorescence microscopy and/or ELISAs to investigate the phosporylation states of proteins in the MAPK signal transduction cascade in these cells. The course culminated with a unit on proteomics, including lectures on de novo structural modeling and threading algorithms, and labs utilizing protein arrays, phage display, and mass spectroscopy to analyze networks of interacting proteins in colon cell lines, together with a literature-based discussion of the latest phylogenomic approaches to functional genome annotation.

During this academic year, Professor Banta served as a panelist, reviewing grants for the National Science Foundation, and also served as reviewer for the Journal of Bacteriology and the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology. She served on the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology Advisory Committee, the Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics Advisory Committee, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Advisory Committee. In February, Professor Banta organized a series of events to coincide with the performance of Ferocious Beauty: Genome, a new piece by the Liz Lerman Dance Company, as part of the dedication of the new Williams College Theatre and Dance Center. Events included a panel discussion on race and genetics, a town meeting on stem cell research, and a lecture on reproductive technologies and genetic screening. Finally, the 9th grade biology class from Pine Cobble School spent two mornings at Williams under the tutelage of Professor Banta. The students learned about biotechnology and used molecular biology techniques to test a variety of foods for the presence of genetic modifications.

Professor Joan Edwards was on leave for fall term and taught Field Botany (BIOL 220) in the spring. For her leave semester, she focused on learning insects with a particular focus on plant pollinators. Last summer, Clara Hard ’06 and Ellen Crocker ’06 worked with her on their senior theses. Clara’s thesis was on the ultra-rapid plant movements and Ellen’s on the life history, speciation and evolution of the sawfly, Empria obscurata (Hymenoptera). Sarah Martin ’07 and Lauren Moscoe ’07 assisted with sawfly rearing in the lab and also collected all the data on the permanent plots documenting the population dynamics of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), an invasive Eurasian weed in Hopkins Forest. During the year, Cathy Small ’09 worked with Prof. Edwards on the pollination biology and seed dispersal of Impatiens pallida. Together they discovered that the pollen of I. pallida is studded with double-pointed needle like raphide crystals, which are considered an anti-herbivore device. They documented that the syrphid fly, Rhingia naisica, is an amazingly voracious eater of I. pallida pollen and ingests these needles along with the pollen—showing that in this case the fly is ahead in the evolutionary arms race between plants and their herbivores.

Prof. Edwards continues to study ultra-rapid movements in plants. Last summer she worked with Prof. Dwight Whitaker (Physics) and Clara Hard ’06 to film the explosive capsules of Sphagnum moss. This moss has tiny capsules (about the size of a small pepper grain) that build up internal pressure and eventually release their spores in a violent explosion propelling the spores further and faster than bunchberry propels its pollen. Their action is much like an air gun and we can measure spore speed and the force of the recoil. We are using SEM, TEM and light microscopy to determine how the capsules explode. She gave invited talks at Isle Royale National Park and at the 790th meeting of the New England Botanical Club. She also gave talks on botanical explosions to 5th graders at the Monument Mountain and the Sheffield Middle Schools.

Prof. Lara Hutson taught the BIOL 101 course, The Cell along with Prof. William DeWitt. In the spring, she taught BIOL 310, Neural Development and Plasticity. This course has a strong laboratory emphasis, culminating in independent research projects that last for five weeks. Some of the highlights included use of TEM to examine myelination of the optic nerve in wild-type and mutant zebrafish, performing primary cultures of embryonic eyes, and analysis of circadian behavior in wild-type and mutant zebrafish. The outcomes of each of these projects were tremendously promising and will likely lay the foundation for future work.

Prof. Hutson has supported many students in her lab this past year: Pamela Good ’06, Tomoki Kurihara ’07, Ashley Burrell ’08, Kathryn Fromson ’06, Kimberly Elicker ’09, Nora Wong ’09, and Danielle Perszyk ’09. In various ways, these students each contributed in some way to understanding the roles of small heat shock proteins during zebrafish development, in particular neural development. Maria Recco continued as a technician in the lab, providing invaluable support and performing research into the role of HSP27 in axonal development. Much of this work was supported by an NIH-RO3 grant.

In the past year, Prof. Hutson reviewed a grant proposal for the NSF, served on an NSF review panel, and reviewed a manuscript for the journal Development. She is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for Developmental Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the American Association of Anatomists. She attended the annual meeting for the American Society for Cell Biology in December ‘05, and in January ‘06 attended the biannual Connecticut Valley Zebrafish Meeting with Maria Recco, Nora Wong, Danielle Perzcyk, and Kimberly Elicker.

During this past year, Professor Dan Lynch taught BIOL 308, Integrative Plant Biology in the fall semester; and in the spring semester, a sophomore tutorial, BIOL 206 Genomes, Transcriptomes and Proteomes, and the laboratory component of Biochemistry II Metabolism.

Lynch continued his research on plant sphingolipid biochemistry, supported by a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project titled “The Synthesis and Function of Arabidopsis thaliana sphingolipids.” This is part of the 2010 project at the NSF to characterize the approximately 26,000 genes in the model plant Arabidopsis. This collaboration includes Professor Wendy Raymond of the Biology Department as well as Teresa Dunn at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD and Jan Jaworski and Ed Cahoon at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. In addition, Janis Bravo, Ph.D. joined the lab as a postdoctoral associate. Students working in the lab last summer included Gape Machao ’06, Chris Richardson ’06, Merritt Edlind ’07, Elizabeth Preston ’07 and Meagan Snide from MCLA who worked under the auspices of the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Science Education Grant. During the academic year, Gape Machao and Chris Richardson completed senior thesis projects in the lab, and three other students, Ned Castle ’06, Matthew Slovitt ’06 and Jesse Schenendorf ’06, completed one-semester independent projects. Lynch presented a poster (along with student co-authors) at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists held in Seattle, and he was an invited speaker at the International Conference on Plant Lipid-Mediated Signaling held in Raleigh NC. He also served as a reviewer for several journals including Plant Physiology and Plant Cell.

In 2005-06, Associate Professor Wendy Raymond continued a collaborative research project with Professor Dan Lynch, attempting to discover an elusive plant sphingolipid metabolism gene using yeast genetics. Research associate Maria Recco and first-year student Natalia Gonzales ’09 assisted Prof. Raymond in the lab.

Both locally and nationally, Professor Raymond worked toward disseminating best practices in retaining underrepresented students in the sciences. At Williams, she directed a seven-member team [President Morty Schapiro, Prof. Ollie Beaver (Mathematics and Statistics), Prof. Chip Lovett (Chemistry), Prof. Steve Fein (Psychology), Dr. Joyce Foster (Director of Academic Resources), Analia Sorribas ’06, and Mildred Duvet ’08] that created and began carrying out an action plan for increasing diversity in the sciences at Williams. This team attended a November 2005 Symposium on Diversity in the Sciences at Harvard University co-organized by Prof. Raymond (http://www.williams.edu/biology/hhmi/,) and is working on several projects that include student-led study groups in Math 104, making science research and leadership opportunities transparent to first-year students, and establishing a new WSP course to facilitate internships with scientists outside academia.

In November, Prof. Raymond, along with Professors Chip Lovett and Tiku Majumder (Physics), met with the presidents and other administrators of the Little Three schools to discuss diversity in the sciences, research with undergraduates, and community outreach. Prof. Raymond also led two sessions for Williams faculty on classroom mentoring, one with science faculty and one with faculty from all three academic divisions sponsored by the “Project for Effective Teaching”. These sessions were guided by a two-page document on “Easy Mentoring Tips”, created by a Williams Faculty/Staff Diversity in the Sciences reading group. With Associate Dean of the Faculty John Gerry, Raymond obtained a grant from the Spencer Foundation to fund efforts aimed at retaining representative levels of all students in Biology at Williams.

Prof. Raymond’s national work on diversity in the sciences led to the creation of the aforementioned web site with a summer 2005 Williams Instructional Technology team of student interns (Ronit Bhattacharyya ’07, Younjin Han ’07, and Lee Wang ’07). Prof. Raymond also co-organized a second Symposium on Diversity in the Sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) in April 2006, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and three sponsoring universities, Harvard University, ULM, and the University of Washington.

Prof. Raymond served as a reviewer in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Undergraduate Science Education 2008 Universities Competition. Her local work directing the Williams College HHMI Science Education grant’s “K through Gray” activities (described in the front section of this document.)

Prof. Raymond was on sabbatical in fall 2005. In spring 2006, she taught a revamped Immunology course, BIOL 216.

Professor David C. Smith taught the Ecology (BIOL 203) labs in the fall and taught Communities and Ecosystems (BIOL 302) in the spring. For BIOL 302, he introduced the use of R as a language to use for statistical analyses. During the summer, Meredith Ganser ’08 and Lissetta Shah ’05 assisted with his research at Isle Royale National Park, Michigan—research that is now in its 27th field season. Meredith continued to work with Prof. Smith during the academic year to digitize photographs and to compile measurements of morphological features for thousands of tadpoles.

Prof. Smith continues to work on the long-term population dynamics and the plasticity and genetic structure of the boreal chorus frog populations at the northeastern end of Isle Royale. Over the past year, he has collaborated with Josh Van Buskirk and colleagues in Switzerland to identify microsatellite markers for these specific populations. Once these are identified, they will have the needed probes to assess diversity within and between the different sub-populations. He gave talks on his work at Isle Royale National Park both as part of their naturalist series and on the MV Ranger III. He also volunteered as a consultant to the park on their oil-spill plan.

In fall 2005, Associate Professor Steve Swoap taught Biology of Exercise and Nutrition (BIOL 133), a non-majors course. In spring 2006, he taught Biochemistry II - Metabolism (BIMO 322). Swoap attended three national meetings this last year, including Experimental Biology ’06 in San Francisco, joined by his thesis student, Gillian Sowden ’06. Gillian won the David Bruce Award for top undergraduate physiology presentation. Swoap served as a reviewer for numerous journals over the past year, including for the American Journal of Physiology: Heart, American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Journal of Cell Biology, Advances in Physiology Education, and the Journal of Applied Physiology. Swoap is also an active reviewer of grants for the Career Award for National Science Foundation (NSF). Swoap was also Chair of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Program at Williams College, as well as the Chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Swoap won the “Outstanding Young Alumnus Award” from his alma mater, Trinity University. Swoap’s research was supported in part by an active grant from NIH: Heart, Blood and Lung Institute.

Assistant Professor Claire Ting taught Life at Extremes: Molecular Mechanisms (BIOL 414) in the Fall of 2005, and with Manuel Morales, team-taught the introductory course The Organism (BIOL 102) in spring 2006. In the fall, she was also invited to lead a workshop on the “First Day of Class in Division III” at the Williams College PET Conference for new faculty.

In addition, she continued an active research program on the molecular physiology of Prochlorococcus, an abundant and ecologically important marine photosynthetic microorganism, and focused on how genomic differences translate into selective physiological advantages in photosynthetic capacity and in tolerance to environmental stress. During the summer, Professor Ting mentored three students in her laboratory. Sesh Sundararaman ’08 was awarded an American Society of Plant Biologists Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to conduct research with Professor Ting on cryo-electron tomography of marine cyanobacteria. He was an author on a Ting lab meeting abstract that was selected for a platform presentation, and traveled to Honolulu in the summer to participate in the Microscopy Society of America’s national meeting. During the summer, Alana Frost ’06, a recipient of a two-year Williams College Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and Shuo Chen ’07 were also productive members of the research team, and characterized the molecular responses of marine cyanobacteria to abiotic stress. In addition, Assistant Prof. Ting hosted four high school students in her lab for one week as part of the Biology Department’s outreach program funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute. During the academic year, Assistant Professor Ting mentored two biology honors thesis students, Alana Frost ’06 and Alejandro Acosta ’06. She also supervised the research projects of one independent study student, Shuo Chen ’07, one winter study student, Meghan Ramsey ’07, and two research assistants, Sesh Sundararaman ’08 and Gaby Chancay ’08, in her laboratory.

Assistant Professor Ting was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty for her teaching, research, and scholarship. She was invited to present talks on her research at the Microscopy Society of America’s meeting in Hawaii and at the American Society of Plant Biologists Northeast Regional meeting at Smith College, and she participated in the Gordon Research Conference on Marine Microbes. She was also invited to organize and chair a symposium on “Advances in Microscopy of Photosynthetic Organisms: An Integrative Understanding of Cell Structure and Function” for a national meeting. Assistant Professor Ting served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation and for the American Society of Plant Biologists undergraduate research fellowship program.

Jason Wilder joined the Biology Department in July 2005. He spent the summer setting up his research laboratory, which focuses on various facets of human and Drosophila evolutionary genetics. Two honors thesis students, Ben Brown ’07 and Elizabeth Hewett ’07, bravely committed to pursuing research in the brand new lab. Ben’s thesis, which was awarded an $825 Grant-in-Aid of Research by the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, explored the evolutionary forces responsible for a high incidence of aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency among many East Asian human populations, resulting in an intolerance to alcohol consumption. Elizabeth’s thesis examined the long-term DNA sequence evolution of genes involved in human malaria resistance among a diverse group of primates. In addition to his laboratory research, Wilder was awarded a $146,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a DNA sequencing and analysis facility at Williams College. In the spring, the centerpiece of this new facility, a Beckman-Coulter CEQ 8000 DNA Analyzer, came on-line. This instrument is capable of a wide variety of DNA sequencing and analysis techniques, and will be widely useful for research and curricular applications.

In the fall semester, Wilder taught Evolution (BIOL 305), which included the development of a new laboratory component. The highlight of the new lab program involved students sequencing a small portion of their own DNA and comparing it to published data from populations all over the world, as well as ancient DNA recovered from Neanderthals and other specimens. In the spring, Wilder taught a new 400-level course entitled Evolutionary Genetics. This discussion seminar examined topics ranging from genome evolution to the genetic basis (or lack thereof) of human race.

Wilder attended the meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Tempe, Arizona, where he served as a judge in the poster presentation contest. He served as a reviewer for the journals Genetics, Evolution, Journal of Molecular Evolution, Human Biology, and the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology. In addition, he served as a reviewer for the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation’s Cooperative Grants Program.

Heather Williams attended the annual Bird Song Workshop at the Rockefeller University Field Research Center in Millbrook, NY. She developed a new version of the Neuroscience Senior Seminar, covering adult neurogenesis – the addition of new brain cells in adults. The course was coordinated with a seminar given by Dr. John Kirn (Wesleyan) on the role of new neurons in learning. In the spring, she gave a Bronfman bag lunch on topics associated with that course. She also taught Animal Behavior, introducing another generation of Williams students to the vagaries of campus squirrels and red-winged blackbirds. Song bird research continued in her lab, where Maggie Carr ’06 completed a neuroscience honors thesis that examined cross-species variation in rules for song syntax and developed a model of brain mechanisms for generating different forms of syntax.

Steve Zottoli taught Introduction to Neuroscience (BIOL 212) in the fall and Animal Physiology (BIOL 205) in the spring. Jason Sloane ’06 conducted honors thesis research in his laboratory focusing on methods to promote regeneration after spinal cord injury in fish.

Zottoli spent the summer of ’05 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. While there, he lectured in the SPINES (Summer Program in Neuroscience Ethics and Survival) course. Zottoli stepped down as President of the Grass Foundation, he but continues as a Life Trustee. The Grass Foundation, a not-for profit philanthropic organization funds various programs in neuroscience.

Daniel Aalberts, Williams College, Department of Physics and Astronomy

“Asymmetry and Abundance of RNA Pseudoknots”
Rachel Ballard-Barbash, National Cancer Institute, Biology Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker

“Energy Balance and Cancer: Do Weight and Physical Activity Make a Difference?”
Bruce M. Beehler, Williams ’74, VP Conservation International, Co-sponsored by Hoffman Bird Club

“Doing Biodiversity Science to Support Conserving the New Guinea Wilderness: From the Foja Mts. Expedition to the Memberamo Conservation Corridor”
Daniel Bush, Colorado State University, Biology Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker

“Life without a Heart: Defining the Role of Plant Sugar and Amino Acid Transporters in the Context of Resource Allocation and Multicellular Growth”
James Carlton, Williams-Mystic Program, Co-Sponsored by Center for Environmental Studies and MAST

“Reconstructing the Sea: Understanding the Modern History of Marine Biodiversity”
Susan Courtney, Johns Hopkins University, Co-Sponsored by the Departments of Physics, Psychology,
and the Neuroscience Program

“Biased Competition in Working Memory and Cognitive Control: Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging”
David Deitcher, Cornell University, Co-Sponsored by Neuroscience Program

“Probing Neurotransmitter Release with Drosophila Mutants”
Charles Delwiche, University of Maryland at College Park, Co-Sponsored by BiGP and BIMO

“The First Green Revolution: The Origin and Evolution of Plastids”
John Kirn, Wesleyan University, Co-Sponsored by Neuroscience Program

“Adult Neurogenesis”
Joe Martinez, University of Texas, San Antonio, Neuroscience Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker
Co-Sponsored by the Neuroscience Program

“How the Brain Stores Information”
Susan Michaelis, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Biology Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker, Co-Sponsored by BIMO

“From Yeast Cell Biology to Human Progeria: Can an Anti-Cancer Drug (FTI) Be Used to Treat Children with a Premature Aging Disorder (HGPS)”
Karen Nelson, The Institute for Genomic Research, Co-Sponsored by BiGP

“Microbial Genomics: From Single Species to Whole Ecosystems”
Gary Nolan, Stanford University, BIMO Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker, Co-Sponsored by BIMO and BiGP

“The Deeper Correlations: Single Cell Kinase Signaling in Leukemia and Autoimmunity”
David Orwig, Harvard Forest – Harvard University, Co-Sponsored by Center for Environmental Studies

“The Pervasive Impacts of the Invasive Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on the Structure, Composition, and Function of Eastern Hemlock Forests”
Michael Rogawski, Epilepsy Research Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Neuroscience Class of 1960 Scholars Speaker

“Why Women with Epilepsy Tend to Have Seizures around the Time of Menstruation”
Bradley Smith, Williams ’94, Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Co-Sponsored by Gaudino Forum

“International Biosecurity: Pandemic Flu to Bioterrorism”

Henry W. Art, Williams College

“Curricular Models for Environmental Programs”
Hudson Valley Environmental Conference, Marist College.

“50 Things on Stone Hill”
Clark Art Institute 50^th Anniversary Celebration

“Agriculture in the Berkshires - A Discussion with Verlyn Klinkenbourg”
Williamstown Rural Land Foundation.

“Penguins in Antarctica”
Hoffman Bird Club

“Where Have All the Wildflowers Gone?”
Rhode Island Wild Plant Society
Lois Banta, Williams College

“Type IV Secretion: Structure-Function Analysis of the VirB10 Energy Transducer”
International Symposium on the Comparative Biology of the Alpha-Proteobacteria, Blacksburg, VA.

“Experiential Education in Integrative e Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Proteomics: A Lab-Intensive Course”
Mellon 8 Workshop on Simple Eukaryotes in Undergraduate Research and Teaching, Pomona, CA.
Meg Giuliano ’05, Danai Masarurwa, Anne Newcomer ’04, Jacqueline Hom ’04, Ken-ichi Ueda ’03, Susan Levin ’02, and Lois Banta, Williams College

“An Internal Promoter within the virB Operon Regulates Transcription of pTi-Borne virB8 and Responds to the Presence of VirD2”
Twenty-Sixth Annual Crown Gall Conference, Poster Presentation, Bloomington, IN.
XII International Congress on Molecular-Plant Microbe Interactions, Merido, Mexico.
Lois Banta, Williams College, Eric Cascales, Cedar McKay, Tanya Gedik, Meg Giuliano ’05, and Peter Christie

“Identification of a Conformationally Locked Variant of VirB10 That Is Blind to ATP Energization”
Twenty-Sixth Annual Crown Gall Conference, Bloomington, IN.
Oliver Burton ’06, Lois Banta, Students in Microbiology 315, Spring 2005, Williams College

“Genomic Analysis of the Exopolysaccharide Biosynthetic Pathways in Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Agrobacterium vitis”
Twenty-Sixth Annual Crown Gall Conference, Poster Presentation, Bloomington, IN.
Shannon Chiu ’08, Oliver Burton ’06, Molly Sharlach ’05, Emily Hatch ’03, Virginia Newman ’04, Alice Hensley ’04, Praveen Rao, Stan Gelvin, and Lois Banta, Williams College

“The VirC1 Putative ATPase Motif Is Required for Virulence”
Twenty-Sixth Annual Crown Gall Conference, Poster Presentation, Bloomington, IN
Wendy Raymond, Williams College

“tRNAs Are Living Links to Earth’s Ancient RNA World”
Bennett College, Greensboro, NC
Steve Swoap, Williams College

“A Long Winter’s Nap: Mechanisms of Hibernation”
Trinity University, TX
Claire Ting, Williams College

“Comparative Three-Dimensional Imaging of Environmentally Critical Cyanobacteria through Cryo-Electron Tomography”
Microscopy Society of America’s Microscopy and Microanalysis Meeting, Honolulu, HI

“Molecular Responses to Abiotic Stress in Marine Cyanobacteria: Evolution of Divergent Strategies”
American Society of Plant Biologists, Northeast Regional Meeting on Light and Plant Biology, Northampton, MA