Honors Program Symposium

Please join us for the Fall 2023 Honors Program Symposium presentations and show your support for these bright, dedicated, and hard-working students. 

Bagels, snacks, and drinks will be served at both events. 

BIO 111 SEA-PHAGES Poster Presentations (Fogarty and Broussard)
The following Honors students have been working on parallel but independent projects to isolate and characterize novel bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) from soil samples that they have collected. The students initially documented the conditions and location of the soil samples. Once a bacteriophage (phage) was isolated, the students purified it, scaled up the production of phage, and characterized their individual phage. Characterization includes whether the phage has gone through a lytic or lysogenic life cycle, restriction enzyme digestion of the phage DNA, and visualization of the phage using transmission electron microscopy. Finally, the phage will be archived at the University of Pittsburgh for future research. 

• Krystal Avila
• LaPrecious Harris
• Neil Joshi
• Amandine Lambert
• Marius Loeken
• Hayley Mahan
• Ian Rasmussen
• Lorelei Schreiner
• Claire Simmons
• Kalli Simmons
• Meredith Smith
• Zachary Soule

BIO 250 SEA-GENES Poster Presentations (Dr. Ward)
The SEA-GENES (Gene-function Exploration by a Network of Emerging Scientists) project involves techniques of molecular biology and genetics to investigate the functions of genes encoded by a bacteriophage, Mabel. The aim of the SEA-GENES project is to illuminate the vast unknown: explore novel bacteriophage gene functions by using bioinformatic inferences, amplifying and isolating the genes, and using phenotypic assays to study the link between genotype and phenotype. Each student will clone up to 5 phage genes into an expression plasmid and test their ability to kill the native host, Mycobacterium smegmatis. Students will present this work at the end-of-semester Poster Symposium and document it in a lab notebook. Their plasmids and results will be archived at HHMI. 

The following Honors students will be presenting their research:

• JG Cornett 
• Torrent Murthy 
• Mariela Pacheco-Mendoza 
• Kathryn Shriver 
• Victoria Smith 
• Claire Stafford
• Adrian Vanderputten 
   

Also see the December 8 event where Honors Program students present their research projects. 

Learn more about the Honors Program.