{"id":4266,"date":"2016-01-11T15:23:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T20:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/19\/biology-department-gains-national-recognition-for-t-cell-research\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T14:41:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:41:32","slug":"biology-department-gains-national-recognition-for-t-cell-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/biology-department-gains-national-recognition-for-t-cell-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Biology majors gain national recognition for T-cell research"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

The accolades keep coming for the Furman biology department\u2019s ground-breaking research into the chemical processes behind T-cell activation.<\/p>\n

Early in the summer, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE<\/a>) sent a video team to campus to document a procedure developed by biology professor Jason Rawlings \u201996 that uses a flow cytometer to track the decondensation of T-cell chromatin. Decondensation allows the cells to activate to attack pathogens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s huge for Furman. It gets us on the map,\u201d Rawlings said. \u201cIt shows Furman students are doing some top-end research.\u201d<\/p>\n

JoVE, a peer-reviewed scientific video journal, is devoted to publishing scientific research in a visual format to help researchers improve on the \u201ctime and labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental techniques.\u201d In this case, that innovative technique was using a florescent antibody that could be seen binding to histone inside chromatin, and being able to monitor it opened the door for Rawlings<\/a> and his team of Kellie Bingham \u201914, Megan Lee \u201915, Jenna Meredith \u201915, and Taylor Mitchell \u201915 to make a discovery that previously earned Furman a national award and publication<\/a> in the prestigious journal Molecular Immunology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the chromatin decondenses the histones are more accessible to the antibodies and bind better, so the brighter the florescence the more of the antibodies that have bound to the histones themselves,\u201d Bingham said. \u201cSo it gives us a signal showing the chromatin is less condensed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being able to read these signals allowed Bingham and her classmates to make a big jump in a research project Rawlings had started as a Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital and brought with him to Furman when he was hired in 2010. Using the technique, they determined that intracellular calcium\u2013calcium inside the cell\u2013is both required and sufficient for chromatin decondensation.<\/p>\n

\"Megan<\/a>

Megan Lee describes the technique for dissection of the spleen from a mouse<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe implications that are so significant about this project is that before they didn\u2019t realize the mechanism by which T-cell activation fully occurred, and if this was able to be explained further then you can either shut T-cells off in the case of auto-immune diseases or even turn then on to help boost your immunity in terms of cancer and things like that,\u201d Bingham, now a student at the Medical University of South Carolina, said. \u201cSo it\u2019s a really big deal to learn more about how activation occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

How big? The findings earned national accolades at the 53rd<\/sup> Midwinter Conference of Immunologists<\/a> in Asilomar, Calif., where the team was honored with the Council Award, given to the most outstanding graduate school poster. This would be a remarkable accomplishment for a school\u2019s graduate students; for undergraduates to win is almost unheard of, as is a peer-reviewed paper being published in Molecular Immunology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat journal has papers from UPenn. That\u2019s an Ivy League school. These are all top-notch research institutions,\u201d Rawlings said. \u201cGrad students would love to get their name on a paper in this type of journal, and here we are as undergraduates doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCalcium mobilization is both required and sufficient for initiating chromatin decondensation during activation of peripheral T-cells\u201d was published in December of 2014, and it marked the first time a predominantly undergraduate institution has been represented in the journal in more than a year, according to Rawlings. Read the team\u2019s paper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re two separate things but they very much intertwine with each other,\u201d Bingham, who returned to Furman to participate in the filming for JoVE, said. \u201cThe JoVE (publication) is more of the mechanics behind the experiment whereas the molecular immunology experiment is more of the finding behind the experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingham, a biology major from Cayce, S.C., credits Rawlings for not only having the initial idea but also for teaching her and her teammates the intricate technical skills required to obtain accurate data. And she\u2019ll never forget the moment they found what they were looking for.<\/p>\n

\"Kellie<\/a>

Kellie Bingham demonstrates the process of making a single cell suspension of lymphocytes from spleen<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThat was a very a-ha moment, at least for me,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was a pretty exciting day in the lab \u2026 Seriously, the caliber of professors (in the biology department) is just unbelievable. Everyone is just so dedicated and wants you to succeed and goes above and beyond the classroom time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rawlings became interested in returning to his alma mater when he saw the Charles H. Townes Science Center<\/a>, which didn\u2019t exist when he was a student. He realized right away it would give him and his students tremendous opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, Furman had to be a place where I could not only teach but still be able to do research, and meaningful research\u2014not just the kind of research that ends up as a presentation at a meeting somewhere and doesn\u2019t go anywhere after that, but research that can be published in a real journal that\u2019s peer reviewed, that would give visibility not only to myself but to the institution,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when I interviewed for the job here I realized this could happen at Furman \u2026 The students have to be bright. The things I require my students to do in a lab, I feel comfortable requiring it of Furman students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about the Furman biology department<\/a>\u00a0or view the Jove<\/a> video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The accolades keep coming for the Furman biology department\u2019s ground-breaking research into the chemical processes behind T-cell activation.\u00a0Early in the summer, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE<\/a>) sent a video team to campus to document a procedure developed by biology professor Jason Rawlings \u201996 that uses a flow cytometer to track the decondensation of T-cell chromatin.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s huge for Furman. It gets us on the map,\u201d Rawlings said. \u201cIt shows Furman students are doing some top-end research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,19,27,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-biology","category-student-life","category-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}