A 2010 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Raymond W. Sarber Award is being presented to Travis D. Hull, an undergraduate student at Juniata College, Huntington, PA, for his work on transposon mutaganized genes. It is presented in honor of the late Raymond W. Sarber and his contributions to the growth and advancement of the ASM.
Johnson has spent the past two years working on the soil bacterium, Streptomyces coelicolor. He examined transposon insertion mutants with developmental defects using multiple molecular and microbiological techniques. He identified the transposon insertion site for one mutant using restriction-enzymes, ligation of the DNA molecules into circles, inverse PCR, and sequencing.
A novel function in Streptomyces development for a group of proteins that are involved in biofilm formation and virulence in other bacteria had been previously demonstrated in the lab. Johnson continued this work by analyzing single and double mutants for two EAL/GGDEF proteins that naturally contain altered catalytic sites. He recently received a Sigma Xi grant to study whether some of the proteins exhibit phosphodiesterase and/or diguanylate cyclase activity.
Johnson is President of Juniata's Tri Beta Biological Honor Society and Student Government President, Vice President of the ASM's Juniata College Student Branch, a chemistry tutor, a biology laboratory teaching assistant, and a member of the track-and-field team. In addition to making many scientific presentations, he was awarded first place among poster presentations at the 2008 ASM Allegheny Branch meeting. Johnson was also awarded a 2009 ASM Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
The Raymond W. Sarber Award will be presented during the 110th General Meeting of the ASM, May 23-27, 2010 in San Diego, CA. ASM is the world's oldest and largest life science organization and has more than 43,000 members worldwide. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences and promote the use of scientific knowledge for improved health and economic and environmental well-being.