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Highlights:

  • Alice Cheung Delivers Distinguished Faculty Lecture

    Professor Alice Cheung was chosen as one of this year's four Distinguished Faculty Lecturers.  She delivered the lecture, "The Birds and the Bees: How Do Plants Produce Seeds?" on March 25th in which she described how the female lures or rejects a mate and the journey of the male to target and fertilize a female.  Read more

  • Reaching out to the Community

    The Eureka! program is providing research experience in science and technology projectsto thirty eighth-grade girls from Holyoke.  Faculty members will work with the students on the Amherst campus over five summers, as the students move through middle and high school. Read more

  • BMB Club Gaining Momentum

    The undergraduate Biochem Club is in high gear, providing students with research and career information via alumni speakers, research and career workshops and opportunities to present research data.  Please contact us if you’d like to share your career experience! Read more

  • Dist. Prof. Elizabeth Vierling

    Elizabeth Vierling Chosen as Spotlight Scholar

    Distinguished Professor Elizabeth Vierling, a leader in research on heat stress in plants, is being recognized as a Spotlight Scholar. Vierling studies molecular chaperones, molecules necessary for protein folding, transport, modulation and regulation, and also important for plant stress tolerance.  Read more

  • Prof. Danny Schnell of UMass Amherst

    Danny Schnell Presented Award at Faculty Convocation

    BMB Professor Danny Schnell is one of five faculty on campus recognized at Faculty Convocation on October 4th.  He was presented the Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity for his work in organelle biogenesis and protein import into plant chloroplasts.  Read more

  • New Life Science Laboratories Building Open for Research

    A number of very excited BMB faculty and their lab members, along with faculty from five other departments on campus, moved their labs and offices into Phase I of the new Life Science Laboratories which contains state-of-the-art open-format laboratories designed to foster collaboration among research groups. Read more

  • Prof. Peter Chien, UMass Amherst

    Microbial Temper Tantrums: Stressed Bacteria Destroy Proteins

    As published August 1 in Cell, scientists from the Chien lab, along with the Laub lab at MIT, showed that bacteria respond to stress such as high temperatures by destroying DNA replication proteins.  The destruction signal turns out to be the buildup of proteins that were misfolded because of the stress.  Read more

  • Distinguished Professor Lila M. Gierasch, UMass Amherst

    Lila Gierasch Selected to Receive Mildred Cohn Award

    Distinguished Professor Lila M. Gierasch has been selected to receive the 2014 Mildred Cohn Award in Biological Chemistry, given annually by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).  The award recognizes and honors scientists at all stages of their careers who have made substantial advances in understanding biological chemistry using innovative physical approaches.

  • Genetics cover image courtesy of Dan Chase and Kathryn Maher.

    Chase and Maher Publish New Knockdown Strategy

    Double-stranded RNA interference (dsRNAi) targets gene-specific mRNAs for destruction and is a powerful approach for rapidly assessing gene function.  Recently Assistant Professor Dan Chase and Postdoctoral Researcher Kathryn Maher developed a novel method for cell type-specific knockdown of gene expression in C. elegans which overcomes limitations of previous methods. Protein function can now be investigated with single-cell resolution in live animals. Read more

  • Active ClpP

    Chien Lab Reports Finding Bacterial "Needles in a Haystack"

    Researchers in the Chien lab recently used a combination of biochemistry and mass spectrometry to 'fish out' proteins targeted for degradation during bacterial development.  In recently published work, they report over 100 new candidate proteins that cover all aspects of bacterial growth, including DNA replication, transcription, and cytoskeletal changes.   Eliminating the ability to degrade one of these new targets makes the bacteria unable to differentiate properly, thereby dramatically affecting bacterial development.  These insights could identify new drug targets in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a growing human health concern.  Read more