October 06, 2011

by Cathryn Westra

Heyer working last summer with synthetic biology research students (l-r) Annie Temmink '11, Shashank Suresh '12 and Romina Clemente '12.

Professor of Biology Malcolm Campbell and Associate Professor of Mathematics Laurie Heyer have received a grant of nearly $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to further undergraduate research in the field of synthetic biology. Their collaborators in the research at Missouri Western State University received an equivalent amount, raising the total to almost $400,000.

The new grant will fund research for the next two years by 12 Davidson and 12 Missouri Western undergraduates. Students will meet weekly during the school year to discuss their projects, and will perform the bulk of the labwork during June and July.

"Research is one of the highest forms of teaching," commented Heyer. "We have three goals. The first is to learn every day. Second is to have fun, and third is to contribute something valuable to the field of science. We've done pretty well at that so far, because almost all of our student researchers have been published in scientific journals."
Synthetic biology is a discipline that employs biology, chemistry, computer science and mathematics to manipulate DNA. Students assemble DNA parts and insert them into living organisms such as bacteria. The bacterial cells read the DNA like a set of instructions, and perform tasks based on those instructions.

Davidson and MWSU began their partnership in synthetic biology research-education in 2006 after meeting at IGEM, an annual competition held at MIT. Their teams have manipulated bacteria to solve computational and mathematical problems. For example, in 2008 they constructed a bacterial computer that uses XOR logic to compute a hash function, which could be used to authenticate documents and enforce security. That work was published in 2011 with 16 undergraduates and one local high school student.

Earlier work by the Davidson and MWU labs was also sponsored by NSF grants. The projects have also received support from the Davidson Research Initiative and through a Howard Hughes Medical Institute educational grant.

Individual students involved in previous research include Jim Dickson '09, who is pursuing a PhD. in mathematics at Virginia Tech; Mike Waters '10, who is working on an M.D./Ph.D. in the department of neuro-surgery at the Medical College of Virginia; and Pallavi Penumetcha'11, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient doing AIDS research in the African nation of Botswana.

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,900 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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