Eleven students and two faculty members from Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) spent one week of their winter break this January in an intensive course focused on computational skills, bioinformatics and limb regeneration in axolotls. The course was led by INBRE Bioinformatics Core Director Joel Graber, Ph.D. and James Godwin, Ph.D., an assistant professor at MDI…

Work done by INBRE students from UMaine at Fort Kent and Presque Isle during an INBRE short course has contributed to a paper published in the journal Genetics in February 2021. The article describes several new tools for rapid CRISPR-mediated labeling of proteins that may substantially increase the speed, efficiency, and ease of in vivo microscopy studies in C. elegans. The undergraduate student…

Out of an estimated pool of over 1,250 college sophomores and juniors who were nominated by their institutions, 410 college students from across the United States were awarded Goldwater Scholarships for the 2021-2022 academic year. Two of the students are affiliated with Maine INBRE at Maine institutions. Jacob Cote, University of MaineMentors: Current INBRE Project Leader Dr.…

Bailey West, a biochemistry major from Stockton Springs, has been named valedictorian and outstanding graduating student at the University of Maine. As an undergraduate in the Honors College at UMaine, she participated in the phage genomics course with INBRE Project Leader Sally Malloy and received an INBRE summer fellowship in 2019 to work in the laboratory…

Congratulations to INBRE Project Leader and Bates assistant professor Lori Banks, Ph.D., who has been cited as one of 1,000 inspiring black scientists in the United States by Cell Mentor, a resource that supports and empowers early-career researchers. Bank’s INBRE-supported research explores the biochemical features of viroporin proteins from pathogenic viruses, like rotavirus, with the potential to impact prevention…

The 48th annual Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium took place virtually on April 28-30, 2021, offering a platform to share research results, exchange ideas, promote collaboration, and network with Maine scientists and students.  The event included online poster and speaker sessions and a career panel for students, as well as a panel on COVID-related research throughout the…

INBRE Project Leader Dr. Timothy Breton and three undergraduate students from the University of Maine at Farmington visited the MDI Biological Laboratory in November to use the cryostat room to conduct in situ hybridization experiments. “This was the first time that the University of Maine at Farmington has ever attempted such an experiment, and it would not have been…

While bioinformatics, the science of collecting and analyzing complex biological data, has become an essential tool in biology, the potential for extracting information vastly exceeds the number of biologists skilled at mining it.  The Bioinformatics Core has as its primary mission the goal to help scientists gain skills at data mining. The Core leverages relevant skills and…

by INBRE Program Coordinator Dustin Updike, Ph.D. INBRE Program Coordinator Dr. Dustin Updike has mentored 13 undergraduate students in his lab at the MDI Biological Laboratory, 6 of whom were supported directly by the INBRE program. INBRE students mentored by Dr. Updike are currently conducting graduate research at Dartmouth College, Cornell University and also working…

The Research Resources Core (RRC) Grants program provides small grant awards to researchers from institutions engaged in biomedical research and research training within Maine. Faculty from Maine IDeA institutions (those with INBRE or COBRE programs); independent, non-profit research institutions; or public and private undergraduate institutions are eligible to apply for funding. Note: Scientists who are directly funded…