University of Central Arkansas INBRE Impact

Student Involvement Students Positively Impacted. Our INBRE-supported faculty members continue to engage many undergraduate and master’s students in their research programs. Students supported directly and indirectly through INBRE have subsequently worked at Children’s Hospital, UAMS, NCTR, U. of Tennessee, and the Riken Brain Institute (Japan), and others have entered graduate and professional schools including Penn State Univ., UAMS College of Pharmacy, UAMS College of Medicine, University of Houston, and Harding Univ. College of Pharmacy. Students have also performed collaborative research at the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University. Course and Curriculum Enhancements. The new major in Biochemistry has attracted over 70 declared majors in its first two years. The laboratory component of the biochemistry course has been directly supported through translation of research experiences at UCA and collaborating institutions to the classroom experience. All of the equipment purchased with the $75,000 equipment grants over the past two years is dual use (research and teaching) and is used in Biochemistry, Genetics, Cell Biology and Microbiology courses.

Students and Faculty Presentations & Publications Faculty and Student Presentations have increased. Venues have included UAMS, Children’s Hospital, NCTR, UCA-CNSM Student Research Symposium, the Great Plains Analytical Cytometry Association meeting, the International Neurotoxicology Conference, the International Society for Neuroscience Conference, the International Toxicology Conference, the American Physiological Society Conference, the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the University of Memphis, INBRE annual conference, the New Mexico Bioinformatics Symposium, Plant and Animal Genome Meeting XVII, AAPU/Arkansas EPSCoR Meeting, and the Arkansas Academy of Science. Manuscripts have been Prepared using INBRE supported results and preliminary data. Papers have been published in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, and Can. J. Physiol. Pharm. At least three additional manuscripts will be submitted in 2009/2010. Published meeting abstracts (representing both oral and poster presentations by students and faculty) were a vital component of the meetings attended this past year.

Increase Research Grant Proposals are being developed and submitted. Competitive grants have been awarded to INBRE supported faculty from NSF, USDA, and the National Center for Genome Resources. Four UCA faculty members contributed to the INBRE renewal, three as project leaders. At least two faculty members report plans to submit NIH AREA (R15) proposals in the coming year. Shared equipment has been purchased. Research equipment including high-end microscopes, computers, a large capacity - 80 °C freezer, high quality pipetors, and a digital imaging system have been purchased. The most recent $50,000 equipment grant allowed us to acquire fluorescent imaging equipment and a speedvac. These items are being used in both teaching and research in the Departments of Biology and Chemistry.

Faculty Support Supported faculty (past and present*) include: Barbara Clancy* (BIOL), Brent Hill* (BIOL), Steve Foley (BIOL), Nancy Reese (PT), Dwight Pierce (HS), Rick Tarkka (CHEM), JD Swanson* (BIOL), Kari Naylor (BIOL), Kevin Garrison (PT), Lance Bridges (CHEM), Cameron Dorey (CHEM), Melissa Kelley* (CHEM), Ben Rowley (BIOL) and Jeffrey Padberg* (BIOL). Faculty Recruitment. A very highly qualified biostatistician (Dr. Patrick Carmack) was recruited into the Department of Mathematics. Dr. Carmack is initiating a collaboration with Dr. Barbara Clancy.

Annual Event Outreach activities have continued. Dr. Clancy and her research students have continued to be very active in Brain Awareness Week activities and, for the second consecutive year, they conducted two days of activities at the Discovery Museum in Little Rock. Over 800 children and parents attended the activities at the museum.

Developing Partnership Collaborations have been established. Within and outside of the INBRE mentoring relationships, collaborations have been established with researchers at ASU, University of Arkansas, Cornell University, NCTR, UALR, Hendrix College and UAMS. As more biomedically-oriented faculty members are recruited at UCA (e.g. recent hires in bioinformatics and biostatistics) we are working to engage additional departments in our collaborative research efforts.

INBRE in Action During the period of time covered in my INBRE summer fellowship (May-July 2009), I performed seven experiments. Four of these were neuroanatomy experiments, in which five undergraduate students participated. Students were involved as much as possible, including assisting with surgical procedures, animal care, histology, and data reconstruction. Additionally, a graduate student has also begun to analyze the remaining data, using the INBRE-funded Neurolucida system in Barbara Clancy’s laboratory. The preliminary results have been presented at the INBRE Research Day in July of 2009, A poster presentation is being prepared by my graduate student for the INBRE meeting in Fayetteville in October. This summer funding established a collaboration with NCTR, with Tucker Patterson in the Division of Neurotoxicology as my research faculty mentor. Dr. Jeff Padburg INBRE Summer 2009

UCA Makes Strong Showing at Annual Arkansas INBRE Conference Nine faculty members from the College of Natural Science and Mathematics, one faculty member from the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, 44 current and former UCA students and five faculty from UAMS and UALR were authors on 18 poster and 2 oral presentations associated with UCA. UCA students authored one fifth of the presentations at the conference.