The 7th Annual CBSD Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (CoBRE) Research Symposium was hosted at the Double Arrow Lodge in Seeley Lake, MT, Sept. 7-9, 2018. The annual research symposium provided us an opportunity to come together as a research community to discuss the latest research in our laboratories supported by CBSD. The symposium included lectures by Project Leaders who were supported by the CBSD NIH CoBRE grant and a selection of short talks by pilot project leaders and graduate students. We encouraged graduate and undergraduate students to participate in a poster session. There were also presentations from our Computational, X-ray and BioSpectroscopy Core Facilities so attendees could learn more about how these facilities could take their research projects in new directions.

Friday, Sept. 7, 2018

1:00 p.m. Check into hotel (the front desk is located in the Main Lodge), register, drop poster by room (if applicable), grab a snack and settle in

1:30 - 2:30 p.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center):

CBSD Director Stephen R. Sprang, opening remarks and introduction.

CBSD Start Up Funded Investigator, Patrick Secor, A bacteriophage enhances the virulence potential of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

2:30 - 3:30 p.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): "Poster Preview" Talks

• Jill Farnsworth, Department of Biomedical & Pharmaceutical Sciences (BMED) Graduate Student, Negative allosteric modulation of NMDA receptors with GluN2A gain-of-function mutations
• Eric John, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Graduate Student, Hydrogen Bond Enhanced Halogen Bonding Helical Foldemers For Use as Synthetic Anion Channels
• Genevieve Krause, Department of Computer Science Graduate Student, Frameshift aware profile hidden Markov model for protein-DNA alignment
• Yan Li, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Graduate Student, Effective C-H bond cleavage by a high-valent di-cobalt(III ,IV) complex
• Alex Nord, Department of Computer Science Graduate Student, Splice-Aware Multiple Sequence Alignment of Protein Isoforms
• Jaspreet Kaur Osan, University of Alaska—Fairbanks Graduate Student, HLA-DM: An important factor in epitope editing tool
• Xiaobo Wang, Division of Biological Sciences Graduate Student, CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex contributes to FBF-1 function in germline stem cell maintenance in C. elegans
• Luke White, Division of Biological Sciences Graduate Student, Rift Valley fever virus affects host alternative splicing via mechanism involving splicing factor Tra2 β

3:30 - 4:00 p.m. Poster Session Participant set up if didn't occur earlier and break time.

4:00 - 6:00 p.m. OPEN SESSION: Poster Session & Refreshments.

6:15 p.m. Dinner (Pavilion)

~8:00 p.m. Campfire (fire restriction dependant)

9:30 p.m. Poster pick up deadline

Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018

7:00 - 9:00 a.m.  Breakfast (Great Hall, Main Lodge)

8:30 - 10:45 a.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): CBSD Core Facilities, 15 minute presentations with 10 minute Q&A (25 minutes total)

• Sandy Ross, BCRL Director, “BioSpectroscopy Core-- Highlights from Year 7.”
• Dave Holley, MCCF Manager, “Molecular Computation Core Facility: CoBRE Year 7.”
• Tung-Chung Mou, MXDC Manager, “Macromolecular X-Ray Diffraction Core Facility Year 7 Update.”
• Orion Berryman, Director, Small Molecule XRD, “Small Molecule Crystallography at UM”
• Steve Sprang, Director, CBSD – “Mass Spec update: capabilities and future outlook”

10:45 - 11:00 a.m. Break with refreshments

11:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m. PRIVATE SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): Core Facility Round Table with EAC mentors

12:00 - 1:30 p.m. Open Lunch (Pavilion) 

** 12:00 - 1:30 p.m. PRIVATE LUNCH (Hilltop Lodge)

• UM Vice President for Research & Creative Scholarship Scott Whittenburg
• EAC: Suzanne Scarlata, Elizabeth Goldsmith and David Case
• IAC: Richard Bridges, Kasper Hansen, Bruce Bowler, Chris Palmer, Liz Putnam, J. Stephen Lodmell, Ekaterina Voronina, and Stephen Sprang

1:30 - 5:00 p.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): Year 7 CoBRE Bridge Funded and Pilot Project Investigators, 20 minute presentations with 10 minute Q&A (30 minutes total)

• Celine Beamer, The role of the AhR in the thymus  
  
• J. Stephen Lodmell, Induction of alternative splicing in Rift Valley fever virus infected cells
• Richard Bridges, The System Xc- glutamate/cystine antiporter: differentiating substrates, inhibitors and allosteric regulators
• Kasper Hansen, Resolving receptor subunit composition using FRET-FLIM
• Christopher Palmer, Nanodisc Capillary Electrophoresis: Characterization of Chemical Interactions with Lipid Bilayers
• Monica Serban, Interplay between Silk Fibroin’s Structure and Its Adhesive Properties
• Ekaterina Voronina, Coordination of stem cell proliferation and differentiation through post-transcriptional control 

5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Break

6:00 p.m. Keynote Dinner (Pavilion)

7:00 p.m. Keynote Speaker (Pavilion)

Keynote Speaker: Bruce Bowler, Associate Director of the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics (CBSD), University of Montana
Title:  Cytochrome c: On Being Flexible

Sunday, Sept. 9, 2018

7:00 - 9:00 a.m. Breakfast (Great Hall, Main Lodge)

8:00 - 10:00 a.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): Current Junior Investigators, 30 minute presentations with 10 minute Q&A  (40 minutes total)

• Philippe Diaz, Modulation of Epidermal Barrier Function by CYP26 inhibitors
• Dong Wang, On the Way of Designing Bio-inspired Dinuclear Catalysts for C-H bond Functionalization
• Travis Wheeler, Superior software systems for sussing out signals from sequences

10:00 a.m. OPEN SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): Closing remarks

10:15-11:15 a.m. PRIVATE SESSION (Blackfoot Conference Center): Current Junior Investigator and EAC Roundtable

• EAC: Suzanne Scarlata, Elizabeth Goldsmith and David Case
• Investigators: Dong Wang, Philippe Diaz and Travis Wheeler

11:15 - 1:00 p.m. PRIVATE SESSION (Hilltop Lodge): EAC Mentors final evaluation meeting and lunch

8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Check out (Main Lodge)