July 27, 2009

Contact:   Bill Giduz

It's been a banner week for Davidson's James G. Martin Genomics Program! Since its beginning in 2005, Professor Malcolm Campbell and Associate Professor Laurie Heyer have involved students in hands-on, original research both during the school year and summers.

The outstanding quality of that research has been confirmed this week with publication of two papers in peer-reviewed, open access journals, and recognition of excellence from one of them for a paper published last year.

On July 20 the online journal PLoS ONE published an article co-authored by ten Davidson students that has important implications for all genomic research.

On July 24 the Journal of Biological Engineering published a paper co-authored by students and professors at Davidson and Western Missouri University detailing their work in 2007 on "bacterial computers." That project won high acclaim at the time as an entry in the annual international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Jamboree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition, Campbell and Heyer learned last week that a 2008 article they published in The Journal of Biological Engineering was named as the journal's top article of the year. Entitled "Engineering bacteria to solve the Burnt Pancake Problem," it was accessed by readers more than 10,000 times. The article also concerned a project for the iGEM competition, and involved several undergraduates from Davidson and Western Missouri.

In 2002, Campbell and Heyer co-authored the world's first textbook in genomics, Discovering Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics. Genomics became a formal academic concentration at Davidson in 2004, helping students understand both the promises and perils inherent in the ability of this new science to analyze and manipulate the biological building blocks of life.

These two publications attest to the high quality of scholarship performed by Martin Genomics Program students.