Biochemistry students win travel grants to present research

Date of Release: 03/09/2005

SAN MARCOS — Three senior biochemistry majors at Texas State University-San Marcos have won travel awards, enabling them to present their research at the upcoming American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology conference.

Roberto Perales, Carter Mitchell and Jarrod Dale will use the awards to cover travel expenses to the annual meeting of the ASBMB--a national research society--held in conjunction with the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology April 2-6 in San Diego, Calif.

Perales received a Minority Access to Research Careers award from FASEB and another award from ASBMB. Perales’ research--examining the structural characteristics of Fibrinogen, a protein important in blood clotting--is currently under way in Dr. Rachell Booth’s laboratory at Texas State and is in collaboration with Dr. Susan Lord at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Mitchell received an ASBMB travel award and additional support from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the College of Science. Mitchell’s research--involving structural studies on an ion-channel protein complex important for blood pressure regulation--is also in Booth’s laboratory at Texas State.

Dale received an ASBMB Undergraduate Affiliate Network Travel Award in conjunction with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry’s Undergraduate Affiliate Network. Dale has developed several new plasmid DNA vectors that permit regulated expression of genes in yeast cells while working in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Lewis at Texas State.