May 21, 2014

On Saturday, May 17th, fifty-five walkers and runners, including Dartmouth researchers, clinicians and CF families, participated in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Great Strides Walk at Storrs Pond in Hanover. Great Strides is the CF Foundation's largest nationwide fund raising event and this year the Hanover walk raised over $17,000 for CF research and drug development! Walkers enjoyed snacks from Panera Bread, Woodstock Cookies and Moe's before and after a 3 mile trek through the Storrs Pond hiking trails. Lebanon, NH native Robert Plante was named honorary chair of the walk in recognition of his incredible fundraising efforts for CF research. Over the past 25 years, Robert has raised $250,000 in honor of his childhood friend that had CF. The Hanover Great Strides walk was organized by Deb Hogan, Katie Price, Kelli Hvorecny, Sharon Littlefield and Lindsay Gilbert. ​ Katie Price, one of the organizers, is a postdoc in the O'Toole lab, and is supported by a Basbaum Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

May 20, 2014

Chelsea Boyd, who graduated from the lab last spring and recently started as a post-doc at UNC, had another paper from her these published in JB.  In this paper, Chelsea analyzed the various domains of LapA - a large adhesin protein critical for early biofilm formation in P. fluorescens - using mutational analysis approaches.  This work as a collaborative effort with Yves Dufrene and his team, experts in AFM-based approaches to studying bacteria.

May 14, 2014

Dae Gon Ha, a recently graduated PhD student, contributed two chapters to the Methods in Molecular Biology series focusing on Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  His chapters focus on plate-based swimming and swarming motility methods used by our lab group.

May 05, 2014

Shannon Hinsa, a former PhD student in the lab, was just promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Grinnell College in Iowa.  Shannon was a PhD student from 2000-2005, and she was the first student to work on biofilm formation in Pseudomonas fluorescens in my lab.  Check out the link to her web page here.  Congratulations!