News

PhD candidate Rabi Khadka was a consistent winner in spring 2022! He was first selected for the departmental Ed and Mary Grula Graduate Fellowship. He followed up that win by being selected BOTH as the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Mentor and as the 2022 TA of the Year. These awards highlight Rabi's mentorship and teaching skills as well as his intellect and drive. You make us proud, Rabi!

At the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Symposium held April 15, members of the Cabeen lab took home several presentation awards. PhD student Amal Yahya won 2nd place for her oral presentation, "Impact of RecA Functions on Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Suppression". PhD student Somalisa Pan and postdoc Simon Underhill shared a 2nd place award for their poster, "Characterization of the Nitro-PTS in Pseudomonas aeruginosa". PhD student Rabi Khadka took 3rd for his poster, "Mechanistic Basis for Stress Sensing by the Bacillus subtilis Stressosome". Good showing, guys!

PhD candidate Amal Yahya took the top award, the Best Overall Presentation award, at the annual Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases (OCRID) Symposium held April 6. This award is given to the trainee who gives the top presentation at the entire symposium and comes with a substantial cash prize. Amal's talk was titled "Impact of RecA Functions on Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Suppression". Awesome job Amal!

Dr. Cabeen was awarded in spring 2022 the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award. The award requires undergraduate nominations and recommendations and is selected by a panel of students. Cabeen had previously been nominated for the award in 2020. The award honors faculty who have a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching and who foster student learning and enthusiasm.

PhD candidate Chris Hamm took third place at the Missouri Valley Branch of ASM regional meeting hosted at OSU on Mar 18-19, 2022. His oral presentation was titled "Pseudomonas aeruginosa Pyocins Can Extend Antibiotic Effectiveness". The award came with a cash prize. Way to go Chris!

Undergraduate researcher Mary Erdmann won multiple awards in spring 2022. She was first selected by the CAS Student Council as the departmental Outstanding Senior. Then she was selected as a 2022-2023 Niblack Scholar. She is also the recipient of the Sandra Trennepohl Women for OSU Endowed Scholarship. Mary, we are so proud of your achievements!

Recent graduates Nina Baggett and Adam Bronson are co-first authors on new work describing a non-traditional pathway for the production of pyocins--phage tail-like antibacterial complexes--by P. aeruginosa. Unexpectedly, the researchers found that a deficiency in or absence of a recombinase proteins called XerC causes very high pyocin production, but not via the usual mechanism. The results of the study have implications for antibiotic therapy. The work is published in mBio.

Graduate student Somalisa Pan passed her qualifying exam and advanced to formal PhD candidacy on September 9, 2021. She joins her fellow PhD candidates Rabi Khadka (August 9, 2021), Chris Hamm (May 28, 2021), and Amal Yahya (September 9, 2020), and at the moment all of the graduate students in the lab are now PhD candidates. Congratulations, crew!

The Cabeen lab was awarded an approximately $150,000 equipment supplement by the NIH to outfit a newly acquired inverted fluorescence microscope for sensitive fluorescence measurements, including a laser for fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). FRAP can be used to detect the motion of molecules within living cells and derive diffusion rates and other kinetic data. This new equipment will help keep our work at the cutting edge of bacterial cell biology and genetics.