QCB News
2025 Watanabe Symposium in Chemical Biology and Inaugural Undergraduate Chemical Biology Symposium
March 24, 2025
Friday, April 11, 2025: Click here for more details. This symposium is being held in conjunction with the Watanabe Symposium the next day. IU Chemistry will host undergraduate researchers and their mentors for an afternoon of activities. These include four invited presentations from faculty at three PUIs and our own Ben Burlingham (formerly of the University of Mount Union in Ohio), a poster session, a facility and campus tour and pizza!
Please encourage your graduate trainees to attend this new symposium all or in part, particularly those interested in an academic career at a predominantly undergraduate institution (PUI). We hope that some fraction of the undergraduate students and their mentors will stay for Watanabe and learn more about our program in Chemical Biology here. IU undergraduates in QCB trainer labs are also welcome to put up posters! There is no registration for this event. Just come!
Saturday, April 12, 2025: see this page for details (this will continue to be updated). Please encourage members of your group to attend the talks and lunch and the poster session! You must register for the symposium so that we have head count for lunch, and poster count estimate. Click to register here (you may be prompted to restart your registration if you have previously registered). The QCB Ambassadors, Averi McFarland (avemcfar@iu.edu) and Andrew Bach (acbach@iu.edu) will again organize the lunchtime poster and poster awards session. Reach out to Averi or Andrew with questions!
QCB fellowship competition opens
March 20, 2025
Despite all of the uncertainty at the NIH, we will again hold our annual QCB fellowship competition to be used to pay selected trainees effective July 1, 2025. We are projecting six slots from NIGMS (T32 GM131994) and three matching slots from the College of Arts and Sciences and University Graduate School. This will allow us to make 3-5 awards, depending on the availability of funds and the mix of rising second- and third-year students that the QCB Steering Committee chooses to support.
We will accept applications from any PhD student in any QCB trainer lab. Like last year, we will again appoint one or two international students with the remaining slots going to domestic students. NIGMS requires that their funds be used to pay domestic students (citizens or permanent residents). We particularly hope to receive applications from students from underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines.
New trainees will be supported by a stipend of $32,000 in 2025-2026 and $33,500 for 2026-2027. Rising second- and third-year students are eligible to apply with two years of support awarded to rising second-year students, and one year to rising third-year students.
Our fellowship competition is set to close this year on Sunday, April 13, 2025 at midnight. Please apply here. Members of the cohort and lab liaisons, please spread the word!!! We hope to host a robust competition again this year and make as many as four two-year awards.
QCB Trainee Seminar
March 12, 2025
Join us Friday (March 14th) at the Microbiology student seminar series, Microphiles, from 12:40-1:40 in Simon Hall 001 for a talk by QCB Trainee and Ambassador Averi McFarland from the Winkler Lab! Lets show our support and learn more about her research: “Linking Peptidoglycan Elongation to Metabolism in Streptococcus pneumoniae.”
Augusta Publication
March 1, 2025
Current QCB fellow Lauren Augusta (Fuqua lab) is a co-author on a new preprint available on bioRxiv, titled “Linear dicentric chromosomes in bacterial natural isolates reveal common constraints for replicon fusion.” The paper specifically focuses on Agrobacterium tumefaciens and the phenomenon of chromosome fusion. The team identified two naturally occurring Agrobacterium isolates with fused chromosomes, providing valuable insights into the mechanisms and constraints that govern this process. Their work highlights the importance of balanced replication arm sizes and proper resolution systems for the survival of these unique strains. Congratulations Lauren on this work!
QCB Trainee Seminar
February 24, 2025
Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, February 25th) at the A800 Research Talks from 4-5PM in Chemistry Building CH033 for a talk by QCB Trainee Jane Joncha from the Jacobson Lab! Show your support and learn more about her research: “Transposon Mutagenesis to Generate Constitutive Fluorescent Labels for Microscopy of B. subtilis.”
First QCB Evening – Spring 2025
February 19, 2025
The first QCB Evening for the 2025 Spring semester will be on March 6th (Thursday) from 5:00-6:30PM in SI001. Our two speakers will be Victoria Lopez from the Tracey Lab and Renee Kinne from the Hollenhorst Lab. See our QCB evenings page for more information. Any student from a Trainer lab is welcome to attend!
Scott Publication
February 3, 2025
Bach Publication
January 29, 2025
Andrew Bach (Snaddon Lab), one of our current QCB ambassadors, has co-authored a paper published in Helvetica Chimica Acta. The team developed the first successful construction of quaternary-substituted stereogenic centers using a Lewis base-palladium cooperative catalysis scheme and demonstrated a novel approach to competing with direct deprotonation in chemical reactions. The paper has potential implications for synthesizing complex bioactive molecules and is an important step forward in asymmetric synthesis techniques. Congrats Andrew!
Garrett and Osterberg Publication
December 4, 2024
Two QCB trainees are coauthors on a new paper about how Streptococcus pneumoniae manages zinc toxicity. In the study published in PLOS Pathogens, the team with collaborators at University of Texas Health Science Center discovered that five small regulatory RNAs (Ccn sRNAs) play a crucial role in preventing zinc intoxication in S. pneumoniae. Dr. Abigail Garrett (Winkler lab) is a recently graduated QCB trainee in Microbiology and Maximillian K. Osterberg (Giedroc lab) is a fifth year QCB trainee in Chemistry. Their work helps illuminate how S. pneumoniae, a bacteria responsible for nearly 2 million deaths worldwide each year, oversees metal homeostasis.
Richman Publication
November 28, 2024
Hunter Richman, current QCB trainee, is a co-author on a new paper titled “Targeting the Weak Spot: Preferential Disruption of Bacterial Poles by Janus Nanoparticles” published in Nano Letters. The study, a collaboration between Ying Li’s lab at UW-Madison and QCB training faculty Yan Yu, investigates the interactions between Janus nanoparticles and bacterial cell envelopes, revealing bacterial poles’ curvature as a unique vulnerability to be targeted. Congrats Hunter on your contribution to the field of nanotechnology!
