Two Nebraska Wesleyan University students were recently honored for their research presentations at national science conferences.
Mallory Iseminger, a junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, was among 40 undergraduate and graduate students selected to give presentations at the 2012 Student Water Research Conference at Oklahoma State University. Mallory was honored with the "best undergraduate oral presentation" award. Her presentation, "Microbial Communities in Rainwater Harvesting Systems," compared bacteria in treated rainwater with bacteria in untreated water. This research provides the opportunity to analyze the method of treatment used to disinfect rainwater to assure the water is properly treated.
Lindsey Jones, a junior biochemistry major, was selected to present her research at the West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference in Los Angeles. Lindsey received an award for "top oral presentation" in the genetics category. Her research presentation was titled, "Development of a system to deplete Sir2 in order to understand its role in maintaining silent chromatin at the ribosomal DNA locus in Saccharomyces cerevisiae." In her research, Lindsey depleted a protein from cells to understand its role in genetic silencing in a special area of DNA.