It seems that with the summer come and gone, there have been multiple advances made in the lab that haven’t received due credit lately. Blame it on the HUGE number of grants that have been submitted, including renewals, revisions, and training grants, or the papers we’re writing, or the new people (who are coming along nicely), or even the weather (which has demanded, loudly, that I fish on occassion). NehrkeLab has been a busy place!

Here’s the latest couple stories:

First, Cassie Coburn had her “death fluorescence” story published in PLoS Biology this July. For those of you in the know, you realize that we’ve been involved in this since near it’s inception, when Cassie and David Gems and I had a few drinks one night in Madison, WI and talked about the nature of life (and death). It’s evolved since then, and the final story ended up being a huge collaboration between six different labs. The publication itself received quite a bit of press, which unfortunately I didn’t cash in on, being in the middle of grant writing, but I did note that some of the press releases had catchy titles, like, “Blue angel of death discovered in worms”. How’s about that for marketing??

Second, Dr. Tori Matthews has accepted a teaching position at Monroe Community College. He will still be working with us as a part of our outreach efforts to interact with young students in the Rochester City School District, and we are glad to keep him as a part of our group!

Finally, Erik Allman has submitted his thesis document and plans to defend it on October 1st. Erik has been quite successful in the lab; my plan for the next month is to pump him for data and schematics 🙂 He will be heading to Dr. Manuel Llinas’ lab at Penn State shortly thereafter.