The Annual Joint Meeting of the Missouri and Missouri Valley Branches of the American Society of Microbiology saw many familiar faces March 9-10.

Eight MSU students trekked to Kansas City, Kansas, to share research and network. Three students were recognized for their presentations.

About the participants

Drs. Kyoungtae Kim, professor of biology and associate dean of CNAS, and Christopher Lupfer, assistant professor of biology, had several of their students attend.

Students from Kim’s lab

• Mariel Delgado Cruz, graduate: Exploring the potential role of vps1 as a fusion protein
• Cullen Horstmann, undergraduate: Silver nanoparticles on yeast viability with bioinformatics analysis
• Wes Short, graduate: Searching for recruitment domains and residues of vps1 to target membrane

• Jared Smothers, graduate: Myosin mediates protein recycling toward the Golgi
• Ryan Windish, undergraduate: Site directed mutagenesis of known vps1 ubiquitination sites

Students from Lupfer’s lab

• Meagan Rippee-Brooks, undergraduate: Investigating the role of inflammatory cytokines during influenza A virus and aspergillus fumigatus coinfections in vivo
• Abbigale Mabary, graduate: Generation of yeast 2-hybrid clones to examine the role of nucleotide oligomerization and binding domain (nod)-like receptors

• Hazzar Abysalamah, graduate: Sodium pyruvate alters the immune response to influenza A virus infection in macrophages

A job well done

Three students placed in oral and poster presentations:

• Delgado Cruz: Second place in the Graduate oral presentation
• Horstmann: First place in the undergraduate oral presentation

• Rippee-Brooks: First place in the undergraduate poser presentation

Kim is glad students participate in this conference because it gives confidence, public speaking experience and a renewed sense of purpose.

It also allows students to connect their research to the real world and see the potential impact.