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This summer, Alex Jones ’16 is conducting an important research project to better understand how vitamin C affects growth and development. He is working with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman to study what role vitamin C plays in the metabolism of Manduca sexta, a kind of hornworm that is frequently used in scientific experiments. Jones and Lehman’s research this summer is one part of an ongoing project to determine how exactly vitamin C is necessary for growth and development.

When most of us think about oral health, we might not think far beyond brushing our teeth and our next trip to the dentist’s office. James Robbins ’16, however, knows that there’s much more to it than that. This summer as a Levitt Summer Research Fellow he is researching water fluoridation for improved public health. Working closely with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman, Robbins has been researching the public health debate about water fluoridation.

Thirty-seven Hamilton students and four science faculty recently joined forces to introduce local middle school students to college-level discussion about public health issues.

It might sound surprising, but studying two neurotransmitters found in drosophila, a genus of small flies, may help us better understand human brain chemistry.  While most people may not regularly think about neurotransmitters in our brains, these chemicals are the stimuli behind our frustrations when stuck in traffic or our elevated stress levels when facing a seemingly never-ending pile of assignments. Ashley Perritt ’14 and Niko Wagner ’14 are studying tyramine beta hydroxylase (TBh) and TBh-Related (TBhR) neurotransmitter genes in drosophila to better understand their functions.

Agne Jakubauskaite ’13 has come full circle in the course of her undergraduate research of the newly discovered gene TBhR. Jakubauskaite, a biology concentrator, spent the summer of 2011 learning the ins and outs of protein expression and synthesizing and has now passed on those skills to Jessica Li ’14, a biology concentrator and Olusegun Ogunwomoju ’15. 

The formation of a synapse, the junction between nerve cells, is one of the most the most important and critical stages of nervous system development, and in many cases improper synapse formation is the underlying cause of neurological disease.  The Lehman Lab has discovered a new gene that appears to encode an enzyme that is expressed as synapses develop in invertebrate and vertebrate nervous systems. This summer four students are working to synthesize four different enzymes to explore the function of this novel gene product.

Professor of Biology Herm Lehman gave an invited lecture titled “Monooxygenases: from neurotransmitter synthesis to neurogenesis” to members of the Neuroscience, Metabolism and Aging, and HTS Lead Identification Departments at the Scripps Institute, Jupiter, Fla., on April 20.

Professor of Biology Herm Lehman presented his paper "The Cellular and Molecular Biology of Octopaminergic Neurons" at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Salt Lake City on Jan 6.

Six members of the Hamilton College faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor. Associate professors Debra Boutin, mathematics; Naomi Guttman, English; Shoshana Keller, history; Doran Larson, English; Herm Lehman biology; and Gary Wyckoff, government, were promoted, effective July 1.

On the surface, humans and flies may seem to have very different embryonic development; while it takes nine months for one human baby to develop, hundreds of fly eggs can hatch in the incubation period of only 24 hours. But, in both species, the undifferentiated embryo separates at some point to become different segments and appendages to the body. The molecules that trigger these differentiating genes are called morphogens, and each species has hundreds to thousands of them in its genome. William Stateman ’10 is trying to identify the effects of one specific morphogen on embryos of fruit flies.