Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya is the Director of research in the Biomodel Performance Laboratory, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Centre. An alumna of Presidency College, Kolkata, India (B.Sc., Human Physiology), Dr. Bhattacharya received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University, NJ, USA and went on to do her postdoc at Stanford, CA, USA. She is a pioneer in the field of astro-bionics, which creates and provides innovative, technological solutions for NASA’s human exploration and challenges of life in space. The Bhattacharya lab studies the effects of altered gravity in the spaceflight environment on the molecular biology of model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. An interesting chapter of their research involves investigation of neurobehavioral changes in fruit flies under altered gravity and the associated effects on their nervous and immune systems. Her team is also working on the Biosentinel project to study the impact of highly ionizing radiation on DNA damage in yeast cells. Recent Awards and Honors:
Fun fact! Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya was the project manager for small payloads flying on Progress and Soyuz (Russian spacecraft) and space shuttle missions. She was also the principal investigator for the space shuttle flight experiment, Fly Immunity and Tumors (FIT) which flew on STS-121 in July 2006. Recent Publications:
Jigeesha Mukhopadhyay
PhD student
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A currently active Canadian microbial scientist at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Dr. Charles is a bacterial geneticist whose research program focuses on plant-microbe interactions, functional metagenomics, and bacterial genome engineering for bio-products. Initially, he received his B.Sc. by 1985 in Microbiology at the University of British Columbia, followed by a Ph.D. in 1991 with Turlough Finan’s lab at McMaster University focusing on symbiotic nitrogen fixation, and a postdoctoral position in Gene Nester’s lab at the University of Washington regarding Agrobacterium. From there he obtained a faculty position at McGill University before finding his current position at the University of Waterloo in 1998, where he is now Professor, as well as Director of the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research. During his studies he has developed several scientific fields including those focusing on plant-microbe interactions, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, plant growth-promoting bacteria, functional metagenomics, bacterial genome engineering, synthetic biology, bioplastics and bio-products, microbiome of controlled environment hydroponic systems, herbicide biodegradation, and methanotroph metabolic engineering. Dr. Charles has received a number of awards and honors during his career, including: -2015 Fellowship of Association of Biotechnology and Pharmacy (India) -2015 International Award of the Ninth DBN Science and Technology Awards (China) -2012 Outstanding Performance Award -2000-2010 President, Canadian Society of Microbiologists -1991 NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship In addition, he has also co-founded and is the CSO of Metagenom Bio, a company that uses metagenomic and microbial community analysis in agricultural and environmental sectors. Please check out a very interesting genomic contribution by Dr. Charles and colleagues published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24621/ His most recent paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218302 Please check out his other publications here: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=gTkdyfsAAAAJ&hl=en Recent interviews: https://uwaterloo.ca/science/news/biologist-honoured-ontario-genomics-institute-spark-award A recent Twitter post by Dr. Charles that everyone can relate to: Steven Brady Kuzyk
PhD student Jessie Price (1930-2015) was an American veterinary microbiologist. She is recognized for her contributions to fighting microbial infections in commercial and wildlife birds, including the development of vaccines. A diligent worker, she was accepted into Cornell University free of tuition, partly due to her grades. In 1953, she was awarded a Bachelor of Science from the College of Agriculture. Gaining experience in the field of poultry sciences, she worked as a lab technician for several years under Dorsey Bruner at the Poultry Disease Research Farm at Cornell University. She then returned for graduate studies, earning her Master’s degree in 1958, then her PhD only a year later in 1959. In her doctoral studies, she isolated and cultured a major pathogen among farmed ducks, Pasteurella anatipesti By 1974, at the Cornell University Duck Research Laboratory, she was part of a team that developed vaccines to counter disease in farmed white pekin ducks, turkeys, and pigeons. In 1977, she moved to the National Wildlife Health Centre in Madison, Wisconsin, and shifted her focus to wildlife, notably on control of cholera in wild geese. During her time, Jessie Price was an adjunct professor at Long Island University, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), member of the American Society for Microbiology, and long-time executive member of Graduate Women in Science. Fun fact: She loved Welsh corgis and often took them to dog shows. Her most decorated corgi was named Clara. Further reading and contributions: Gillmer S. 2018. Jessie Isabelle Price (1930-2015). Retrieved from: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/price-jessie-isabelle-1930-2015/ Doctor to Long Island Ducks. Ebony. September 1964. Retrieved July 2020 from: https://books.google.ca/books?id=JaT6tBKGK3sC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=doctor%20to%20long%20island%20ducks&f=false Dean WF, Price JI, Leibovtiz L. 1973. Effect of feeding medicaments on bacterial infections in ducklings. J. Poultry Sci. 52: 549-558. Samuel MD, Shadduck DJ, Goldberg DR, Baranyuk V, Sileo L, Price JI. 1999. Antibodies against Pasteurella multocida in snow geese in the Western Arctic. J. Wildl. Dis. 35: 440-449. Andrew Hogan PhD student SIR JAGADISH CHANDRA BOSESir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) was an Indian biophysicist, botanist and physicist. He is a pioneer in the field of plant neurobiology, known for his ground-breaking hypothesis that “Plants also have receptors for stimuli, conductors (nerves) which electrically code and propagate the stimulus and efferent or terminal motor organs”. Bose conducted his research in the field of plant physiology post his superannuation at Presidency University, Kolkata, India, primarily working on Mimosa pudica and Desmodium gyrans. He demonstrated the electrical nature of the conduction of various stimuli like chemical and environmental cues or wounding. He invented various devices such as the torsional recorder and crescograph to measure electrical responses and heliotropic movements in plants. Bose was a front-runner in the field of plant neurobiology, coining the term "Plant nerve", and through his contributions to plant nervous systemic research, it was established that the nervous tissue in plants is located in the phloem, which conducted the afferent or the sensory and the efferent or the motor impulses. He even measured the speed of the nervous impulse within the petioles and found it to be as high as 400 mm/sec1. In addition to the action potentials generated in response to an external stimulus, he observed automatic or spontaneous rhythmic or pulsatory movements in plants akin to heart beat in animals. His observations were confirmed later by Wildon et al. (1992) who designed experiments to distinguish between a phloem-transmissible chemical signal and a physically propagated signal based on electrical activity in the phloem of tomato seedlings. In the modern era, his work was advanced further by Baluska et al. (2009) by utilizing tools and techniques of modern molecular and cellular biology, chemical ecology and genomics.
Fun fact: The biophysicist, botanist a crater on the moon named after him. Bose is a lunar impact crater that is located in the southern sphere hemisphere of the moon. Relevant articles: Bose JC. (1926). The nervous mechanisms of plants. London: Longmans, Green and Co Wildon, D., Thain, J., Minchin, P. et al. (1992). Electrical signalling and systemic proteinase inhibitor induction in the wounded plant. Nature 360, 62–65 Shepherd, V. A. (2005). From semi-conductors to the rhythms of sensitive plants: The research of J. C. Bose. Cellular and Molecular Biology. 51 (7), 607-619 Baluska, F., Mancuso, S., Volkmann, D., Barlow, P. W. (2009) The 'root-brain' hypothesis of Charles and Francis Darwin: Revival after more than 125 years. Plant Signal Behav. 4(12), 21-1127 Tandon, P. N. (2019). Jagadish Chandra Bose and plant neurobiology. Indian J Med Res. 149 (5) Jigeesha Mukhopadhyay PhD student #BlackBotanistsWeek #BlackBotanical Legacy #BlackRoots #Botany101 Jane Hinton (1919-2003) – was an African-American scientist and veterinarian. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Simmons College in 1939 at the age of 20. She then worked in her father’s laboratory and as an assistant to Dr. John Howard Mueller in Harvard University’s Department of Bacteriology and Immunology where she co-developed the Mueller-Hinton agar. This agar, which most of us may be familiar with, became the most widely used culture medium for Neisseria and the gold standard for antibiotic susceptibility testing. From 1942 to 1945, Dr. Hinton worked as a medical technician in Arizona for the U.S. War Department during World War II. After the war ended, she decided to pursue her interest in veterinary medicine, enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1949, she became one of the first two African-American women to graduate with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (VMD) in the U.S. and to join the Women’s Veterinary Medicine Association. She then worked as a small animal veterinarian until 1955 and afterwards worked as a federal government inspector for the Department of Agriculture in Massachusetts where she was involved in research and response to outbreaks of disease in livestock. She retired at the age of 41 and spent the rest of her life caring for a garden and a variety of pets at her home. Fun fact: she is the daughter of William Augustus Hinton (1883-1959) – the first black professor in the history of Harvard University. He is a world renowned expert in the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis and developed a diagnostic test for syphilis, now known as the “Hinton test”. Relevant articles:
Bastian, H. (23 April 2020). “Jane Hinton (1919-2003)”. Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jane-hinton-1919-2003/ Mueller, J.H. and Hinton, J. (1 October 1941). "A Protein-Free Medium for Primary Isolation of the Gonococcus and Meningococcus". Experimental Biology and Medicine. 48 (1): 330–333. doi:10.3181/00379727-48-13311. Karen Eusebio Masters student |
AuthorWe are graduate students at the Department of Microbiology, University of Manitoba Archives
October 2023
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