Gage Brummer, a senior at Kansas State University, recently published “The Role of Non-Enzymatic Glycation and Carbonyls in Collagen Cross-Linking for the Treatment of Keratoconus” in the journal IOVS (Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science). Gage was a summer INBRE fellow at MDIBL in 2009 and 2010 and has been researching the underlying causes of eye disease under the supervision of Professor Gary Conrad, a visiting scientist at MDIBL and a professor at Kansas State University. Brummer said “These three institutions – Maine INBRE and MDIBL, Kansas INBRE, and the Johnson Cancer Center – have undoubtedly given me the tools necessary to get this paper published.”

Ben King, Staff Scientist at MDIBL, co-authored a paper titled “MicroRNAs support a turtle + lizard clade,” which was recently accepted for publication in Biology Letters. The paper addresses the problem of the phylogenetic position of turtles and the root of the reptilian tree by comparing the complements of microRNAs in three different representative taxa (turtle, lizard and alligator). Ben noted, “This paper is a direct result of my INBRE-funded trip to visit MDIBL visiting scientist Dr. Kevin Petersen at Dartmouth in November 2010, where I adopted his miRminer software. The analysis of this large genome would have very difficult to complete without the new Linux server that was purchased last year and upgraded this spring, also supported by INBRE funds.” The server is an important addition to the Bioinformatics Core for the analysis of high-throughput sequence (HTS) data. The miRMiner software is useful for annotating known and novel microRNAs from HTS data. Anyone interested in using the software can contact Ben.