Fall 2010 Publications

Dr. Brent Nielsen, MMBio

Panicum turgidum , a potentially sustainable cattle feed alternative to maize for saline areas

Dr. Brent Nielsen of the MMBio Department received funding from the U.S. National Academies of Science for his proposal with Pakistani investigators. The proposal focuses on a system that should allow saline land and brackish water to be used for producing an economically beneficial feed crop. Click here to read more about the research.

Dr. Duke Rogers, Biology

Antibodies to Tacarike serocomplex viruses (family Arenaviridae, genus Arenavirus) in cricedtid rodents from New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.

Duke Rogers, of the Biology Department, co-authored a paper that was published in the journal Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases entitled “Antibodies to Tacaribe serocomplex viruses in cricetid rodents from New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico”. He collaborated with researches from Texas and Mexico to assess the presence of hemorrhagic fever viruses in rodents in the area. The most important finding is that three of 15 species of rodents that were antibody positive were antibody to a group of viruses heretofore only detected in South America. Some of the South American arenaviruses are known to cause disease in humans and recent studies have suggested that major epidemics in Mesoamerica were caused by hemorrhagic fevers rather than smallpox.

Click here to read the publication.

Dr. Dixon Woodbury, PDBio

Chemomechanical Regulation of SNARE Proteins Studied with Molecular Dynamics Simulations

PDBio's Dixon Woodbury did sabbatical research on SNARE proteins and his findings appeared in Biophysical Journal, a top journal in his field. To see his publication click here.