After a long and difficult deliberation, we have selected the recipients for the Summer 2009 NextBio Travel Grant!
We were impressed with the quality of essays and very happy to hear about the different ways in which NextBio has been useful to graduate students in the pursuit of their research. The three students who were selected for this quarter’s travel grant are:
Abhishek is a second year PhD student in bioengineering at the University of Auckland who using modeling to study hormone dynamics. In his essay, Abhishek relates how a discovery in NextBio helped direct his research.
In order to develop a mathematical model of the steroid synthesis I was searching for functional mechanism of the steroidogenic acute regulatory protein or StAR. A simple keyword search using StAR returned a well categorized results page and further exploration and filtering of results landed me on a data correlation between StAR and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Inspired from this small but crucial finding I devoted one section of my model to simulate the mechanistic basis of the congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and based on model sensitivity analysis we found new insights into the underlying process and emerging trends in diseased system. This was possible only because of the NextBio which provided an abstracted data correlation derived from several high-throughput data sources.
He goes on to discuss the collaboration features and the NextBio recommendation service and then wraps up the essay with a wonderful final paragraph on his vision for the future of science. I highly recommend you read the full text of Abhishek’s essay.
Sayan is a graduate student in the Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology department at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His essay describes how NextBio has been helpful to his systems biology research.
My chemical kinetics-based computational model has identified and elucidated a key role of the phosphodiesterase (PDE) -mediated degradation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) to adenosine monophosphate (AMP) in maintaining the acidic pH in the lumen of the male reproductive tract. Now, as the pH homeostasis is necessary for sperm maturation (spermatogenesis), I wanted to find out if phosphodiesterase has previously been related to spermatogenic dysfunction. I used NextBio to look up this information, and it was quick and easy to do so. Interestingly, NextBio’s data correlations utility referenced microarray data showing downregulation of two phosphodiesterase genes (PDE1A and PDE4A) in the diseased condition of infertility due to incomplete spermatogenic arrest. We are greatly encouraged by finding this result, and my experimental collaborators are now moving ahead with biochemical experiments to test my model predictions.
I should add that the aforementioned microarray study performed a global gene expression profiling of testicular biopsies, and mentioned only a few selected genes in the text of the article. In particular, the text makes no mention of phosphodiesterase genes, so it would have been difficult to find this result using a typical Pubmed or Google Scholar search. In general, most papers reporting such high-throughput studies can reasonably focus on only a few genes in the text, so I find it useful that NextBio’s data correlations utility can search across publicly available high-throughput datasets from these papers and connect proteins of my interest to specific diseases.
The essay also discusses other NextBio features Sayan finds useful. It really illustrates the power of NextBio, in fact the next time someone asks me what NextBio can do for a researcher, I might just give them Sayan’s essay.
Yunyun is a biochemistry graduate student at Rice University who works on the cohesion complex. In her essay, Yunyun discusses her appreciation of NextBio’s filtering functions and “high specificity”. (The pun lover in me really appreciates that a biochemist chose to compare NextBio to PubMed in terms of “specificity”) The community features of NextBio are also very appealing to Yunyun.
Studying the published literature is one way to learn about the latest progress, communicating with scientists from related fields provides another great way to keep up with the newest findings. NextBio provides a platform for us to find people or groups with same research interest. It has been a pleasure to meet people with same or similar interest through NextBio and share opinions about our research.
All of the essays submitted to the travel grant were well-written and the judges had a very difficult time choosing just three essays. On behalf of the entire NextBio team, please allow me to offer our sincere thanks to all those who applied and to everyone who helped us to spread the word about the grant.
The NextBio Travel Grant program is ongoing. We give out travel grants four times a year, so if you missed the chance to apply for this one, you can submit to for Fall 2009. The deadline is September 30th 2009 and you can find details here.
