On October 4th, Gloria successfully defended her thesis titled “Leveraging the Power of Droplet Microfluidics to Profile the Epigenome”. Her defense was well attended both in-person and virtually and marked the first in-person Bailey Lab defense in three years! The lab was excited to come together and celebrate Dr. Diaz’s accomplishments in and out of the lab.
Congratulations to Gloria from all of us in the Bailey Lab!
Congratulations to co-first authors, current graduate student Krista Meserve and lab alumnus Dr. Abe Qavi, for their latest publication! Their protocol paper explains the method they used for the detection of EBOV and SUDV sGP using the microring resonators. Check out the full protocol here.
Detection of biomarkers for filoviral infection with a silicon photonic resonator platform
Summary: This protocol describes the use of silicon photonic microring resonator sensors for detection of Ebola virus (EBOV) and Sudan virus (SUDV) soluble glycoprotein (sGP). This protocol encompasses biosensor functionalization of silicon microring resonator chips, detection of protein biomarkers in sera, preparing calibration standards for analytical validation, and quantification of the results from these experiments. This protocol is readily adaptable toward other analytes, including cytokines, chemokines, nucleic acids, and viruses.
In addition, congratulations to lab alumna, Dr. Colleen Riordan, for her contributions to a recently published paper in collaboration wtih the Marsh lab at UM! Check out the full publication here.
Purification of the full-length, membrane-associated form of the antiviral enzyme viperin utilizing nanodiscs
Abstract: Viperin is a radical S-adenosylmethionine enzyme that catalyzes the formation of the antiviral ribonucleotide, 3’-deoxy-3’,4’-didehydroCTP. The enzyme is conserved across all kingdoms of life, and in higher animals viperin is localized to the ER-membrane and lipid droplets through an N-terminal extension that forms an amphipathic helix. Evidence suggests that the N-terminal extension plays an important role in viperin’s interactions with other membrane proteins. These interactions serve to modulate the activity of various other enzymes that are important for viral replication and constitute another facet of viperin’s antiviral properties, distinct from its catalytic activity. However, the full-length form of the enzyme, which has proved refractory to expression in E. coli, has not been previously purified. Here we report the purification of the full-length form of viperin from HEK293T cells transfected with viperin. The purification method utilizes nanodiscs to maintain the protein in its membrane-bound state. Unexpectedly, the enzyme exhibits significantly lower catalytic activity once purified, suggesting that interactions with other ER-membrane components may be important to maintain viperin’s activity.
Nerd Nite Ann Arbor is a monthly event organized by the Ann Arbor District Library to promote fun learning and outreach. Each month, three speakers take 15-20 minutes to give an informative, yet informal (no slides allowed!), talk on a topic that they research, or just know a lot about! It is a great place for the speakers to practice their communication skills and it is great entertainment for the audience. Everyone walks away knowing a little bit more about three different topics.
Claire prepared a talk titled “The Microfluidics of an At-home Covid Test”. This was a great topic for Claire to present, as her research in the Bailey Lab focuses on developing microfluidic devices for epigenetic profiling. It was also a topic that easily connected to the diverse audience, as almost everyone has endured one of these lateral flow assays in the past two years.
Claire constructed a giant replica of a covid antigen test, complete with pom-poms for antigens and velcro strips as a capture agent, to walk us through the steps in the test. It was a great presentation and we are all very proud of Claire for partaking in the event! The other two presenters taught us about knot tying and the musical genre, Ska. We all learned something new!
For more information about Nerd Nite in Ann Arbor, visit their website here!
The 2022 Karle Symposium was held in the chemistry building last week. The Karle symposium is a yearly event named for Isabella and Jerome Karle, distinguished graduates of our department, who worked together to advance X-ray crystallography methods. This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Alan Aspuru-Guzik from the University of Toronto.
The Bailey Lab was represented by rising fifth-year, Marina Sarcinella (above), and rising fourth-year, Krista Meserve (left), who presented their work as posters in the poster sessions. Krista won a travel award for her work on Ebola Virus diagnostics! Great job to both!
In addition to the Karle Symposium, the ALUMINUM (Alumni Networking at UMich) and URANIUM (Undergraduate Research and Networking at UMich) symposia were held last week. Rising senior, Sam Edgcombe (right), presented her work on nanodisc optimization at the poster session. Awesome job, Sam!
A beautiful campus, fascinating science talks, and many hours of networking combined for an exciting week at the bioanalytical sensors Gordon Research Conference. Krista, Nico, Gloria, and Ryan attended the conference held on Salve Regina’s campus in Newport, RI during the last week of June. Professors, post-docs, and graduate students traveled to RI from all over the world to share the latest advancements coming from their labs.
After some tricky travel situations, Gloria, Nico, Krista, and Biteen Lab graduate student Anna Calkins attended the Gordon Research Symposium, a two-day event held prior to the GRC for only post-docs and graduate students. They met new friends and shared their research at the poster sessions.
Ryan kicked off the Monday morning scientific talks by highlighting the lab’s work in his talk titled: “New Directions in (Bio)chemical Sensing Using Droplet Microfluidics”. The graduate students presented their own work at multiple poster sessions throughout the week:
Gloria: DropCUTT – Leveraging the Capabilities of Droplets to Automate Enzymatic Tethering Assays
Nico: Multiparametric analysis via a droplet microfluidic-based, transmission phase grating
Krista: Using Microring Resonators for Detection of Viral Biomarkers
Gloria’s poster was voted one of the top four poster presentations and she was invited to give a scientific talk on the last night of the conference. She pulled together an amazing presentation and we are so proud of her for earning this recognition.
Outside of presenting and listening to leaders in the field share their research, the group enjoyed exploring Newport, RI. They wandered downtown to the Wharf and Tennis Hall of Fame, went to a winery, explored the cliff walk, toured Breakers (one of the Newport mansions), and relaxed near the ocean with fellow conference attendees.
One of the week's highlights was making new connections with other graduate students, post-docs, professors, and industry professionals. The group made many great memories and would like to thank the organizers for putting on such a great program of events.
The most recent Bailey Lab Publication, Rapid detection of an Ebola biomarker with optical microring resonators, was highlighted in its journal, Cell Reports Methods, through a QnA with co-first authors Abe and Krista and corresponding author, Gaya. Check out the full interview here!
In addition, the article was highlighted by Washington University School of Medicine and in 360Dx!
We have exciting news to share! This fall Nick will be completing an internship at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana! Nick learned of this internship through his awesome networking skills and will now be working as a research and development scientist starting in August. Nick is most looking forward to “learning more about the multidisciplinary approach used in the pharmaceutical industry to develop therapeutic drugs from the lab and to the consumer.” Outside of working in the lab, he notes he is “looking forward to all the sporting events and concerts in downtown Indy!”
We are all so happy for Nick and we can’t wait to hear about all the great things he learns along the way! Congrats Nick!
Congratulations to Krista and Ryan for their latest publication in Cell Reports Methods. This work was an exciting intergenerational Bailey Lab project, as Krista worked with 2012 alum, Dr. Abraham Qavi, along with his current research advisor, Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe, and collaborators at Integrated Biotherapeutics, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc., the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Washington University. We enjoyed hosting Abe (pictured to the right) for a week while they worked on analyzing the NHP samples for the study!
Summary:
Ebola virus (EBOV) is a highly infectious pathogen, with a case mortality rate as high as 89%. Rapid therapeutic treatments and supportive measures can drastically improve patient outcome; however, the symptoms of EBOV disease (EVD) lack specificity from other endemic diseases. Given the high mortality and significant symptom overlap, there is a critical need for sensitive, rapid diagnostics for EVD. Facile diagnosis of EVD remains a challenge. Here, we describe a rapid and sensitive diagnostic for EVD through microring resonator sensors in conjunction with a unique biomarker of EBOV infection, soluble glycoprotein (sGP). Microring resonator sensors detected sGP in under 40 min with a limit of detection (LOD) as low as 1.00 ng/mL in serum. Furthermore, we validated our assay with the detection of sGP in serum from EBOV-infected non-human primates. Our results demonstrate the utility of a high-sensitivity diagnostic platform for detection of sGP for diagnosis of EVD.
Find the full article here!
Read WashU’s press release about the article here!
Congratulations are in order for 5th-year graduate student Gloria Diaz, who recently received the Exceptional Service Award from the Michigan Chemistry Department.
Gloria has contributed to the department by participating in recruitment activities and chairing the annual Karle Symposium. She has also been engaged in outreach through social media to connect with scientists of diverse backgrounds!
Great work, Gloria! We are so proud!!
Our three 4th years of the Bailey Lab- Marina, Nick, and Claire- all completed their data meetings this past week. These meetings cross off another milestone on their way to PhDs! Congrats to all!!
