Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences

Drew Brooks: Microbiology, music double major named 2019 valedictorian

Drew Brooks of Lyman, Maine is the 2019 University of Maine valedictorian. He is a double major in microbiology and music, with a minor in molecular biology. He will receive two bachelor’s degrees — one in microbiology, and one in music. Brooks’ many academic honors include multiple scholarships and Frederick Radke Undergraduate Research Fellowships. A […]

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Social media spotlight: Arielle Spalla

Hometown: Yorktown, Virginia Arielle Spalla, a junior pre-med microbiology major, will graduate in the spring, travel for a year and read books she hasn’t had time for during her undergraduate career. Then she’ll enroll at Tufts University School of Medicine. For her capstone, she’s doing a literature review for the lab of Melody Neely, an […]

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Rob Wheeler

Wheeler probes how potentially lethal fungal infection eludes body’s defenses

Rob Wheeler is engrossed with a generally harmless fungus that naturally lives in and on people, but also can cause disease and death. For 16 years, the University of Maine associate professor of microbiology has been unraveling the mysteries of the fungus Candida albicans. The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Wheeler a three-year $428,429 […]

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Julie Gosse

Biochemist, physicist team to see antibacterial TCS deform mitochondria

Grocery shopping can be an illuminating chore for a toxicologist. Julie Gosse, a University of Maine associate professor of molecular and biomedical sciences, has scanned the supermarket aisles for products that contain triclosan (TCS), a synthetic antibacterial agent. Since the ’90s, TCS has been in a slew of consumer products, including facial cleansers, toothpaste, mouthwash […]

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Drew Brooks

Drew Brooks: Microbiology, music double major on track for medical school

Drew Brooks, a microbiology and music double major from Lyman, Maine, came to the University of Maine with a goal of becoming a medical doctor. As a sophomore, Brooks already has been accepted to Tufts University School of Medicine through the Maine Track Early Assurance program. Born of a partnership between Tufts and Maine Medical […]

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Honors students using an electron microscope

Going viral: First-year students get hands-on experience in phage genomics course

There is a long list of learning objectives for the HON 150/155 phage genomics course, in which first-year undergraduates conduct hands-on research. They learn how to purify and isolate novel bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacterial hosts — from soil samples. The students learn how to characterize their individual phages — which have the miniscule […]

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