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11/10/2015

Graduate students receive research poster honors at MUACC

Two Department of Chemistry graduate students—Andrew Johnson and Kailey Soller—received poster awards at the 2015 Midwestern University Analytical Chemistry Conference (MUACC). Johnson received the MUACC 2015 Golden Gopher Poster award, and Soller received the 2015 Platinum Gopher Poster award.

Johnson is advised by Professor Erin Carlson. His poster highlighted recent work Carlson’s lab is working on to elucidate structures using a variety of mass-spectrometry based tools including collision induced fragmentation and ion mobility. He was able to present researchers’ conclusions thus far from standard compounds, and some application of what was learned to elucidate novel natural product structures.

Soller is co-advised by professors Michael Bowser and Gianluigi Veglia, and her project is a collaborative one between the two labs. Soller’s poster was about her thesis project, the interactions of single-stranded DNA with phospholamban, a cardiac protein. Phospholamban inhibits SERCA, a calcium pump in muscle cells, and upon addition of single-stranded DNA, inhibition is relieved. This is a length-dependent relief of inhibition, but not sequence specific.

Andrew Johnson and Kailey Soller receive their poster awards from MUACC 2015 program chairs Deanna O’Donnell and Philippe Buhlmann. Pictured, from left, are O'Donnell, Johnson, Buhlmann, and Soller.