Ashley Carducci ’15, Bryan Ferguson ’17, Sophie Mayeux ’15, Laura McCormick ’15 and Mason Schoeneck ’15 presented three posters at the 59th Annual Biophysical Society Conference that took place Feb.8-11 in Baltimore.
Every year, the Biophysical Society meeting provides an opportunity for more than 6,000 international scientists in the interdisciplinary fields representing biophysics to present and discuss their latest research findings. The five Hamilton students presented data collected in the research laboratory of Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten.
Research in the Cotten group features structure-function relationship studies of piscidin, an antimicrobial and anticancer peptide discovered in hybrid striped sea bass. The students presented their posters in a section titled “Membrane Active Peptides and Toxins.” The posters garnered strong interest from researchers in the field and provided opportunities for the Hamilton students to answer questions and engage in lively discussion about their projects.
The poster presented by Mason Schoeneck, Bryan Ferguson, and Sophie Mayeux was titled “Antimicrobial Peptide Piscidin Permeabilizes Bacterial Membranes and Binds Intracellular Targets at Sub-Lethal Concentrations.” A manuscript is currently is preparation to publish this work, which includes Prof. Mike McCormick and Prof. Herm Lehman as Hamilton collaborators.
Laura McCormick presented a poster titled “Analysis of Piscidin and Lipopolysaccharide Interactions: A Step Toward Characterizing Immunomodulation.” Carducci was a co-author with Prof. Cotten and Dr. Ella Mihailescu from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology on a poster titled “The Transmembrane State of Antimicrobial Piscidin in Bacterial Cell Membrane Mimics Dramatically Alters the Polar-Nonpolar Segregation of the Bilayer.”
Cotten was also a co-author on talk given by collaborator Dr. Scott Perrin, a member in the group of Dr. Richard Pastor ’73, from the National Institutes of Health.
