Current CURE Offerings

Course Outline: In this CURE course, students design and complete a scientific experiment utilizing DNA barcoding, a biological tool for rapid species identification. With DNA barcoding, students gain experience using molecular biology techniques, including DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction, and gel electrophoresis as well as data management and analysis skills. Students generate research hypotheses and predictions, testing their hypotheses by designing an experiment with proper replication protocols, randomization, and controls. Previous projects include determining the relationships between vegetables from local grocery stores and comparing biological species that are found near and far from water.

DNA Barcoding Stream taught by: Dr. Mary Glover & Dr. George Ude

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Course Outline: The main goal of metabolomics is to study all the metabolites in a system. The plant metabolites play an important role in the interaction of plants with their biotic and abiotic environment and function as attractors for pollinators or seed dispersers: defensive compounds or toxins that guard against pathogens and herbivores and protect plants. Most of the approved new drugs are reported to have been obtained from natural plant products. Moreover, a majority of the world’s population relies on medicinal plants for its primary pharmaceutical care. This CURE course allows students to gain hands-on experience on metabolomics techniques and various wet-lab and plant research techniques.

Metabolomics Stream taught by Dr. Anne Osano

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Course Outline: Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered from environmental samples. Just as the unique pattern of bars in a universal product code (UPC) identifies each consumer product, a “DNA barcode” is a unique pattern of DNA sequence that identifies each living thing. This is especially true for microbes, which are essential for every part of human life. Plants and animals have closely associated microbial communities that function in very intricate, balanced, and integrated networks. Metagenomics studies seek to understand the biology of these coordinated networks from a big picture level, and to understand how the genes of a microbial community influence each other’s function. This CURE course integrates ideas from molecular biology, genetics, bioinformatics, ecology, and biodiversity—while at the same time providing the flexibility to address a variety of student-driven questions. This CURE course is very engaging, allowing students to generate new data and to answer very complex questions about genetic diversity in a very simple and elegant way. Students can learn many biological techniques including wet lab, field-based research, bioinformatics analysis and more in a user-friendly approach.

Metagenomics Stream taught by: Dr. George Ude

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Course Outline: We are currently experiencing a global health crisis because of a growing number of infections that are not cured with traditional antibiotics. These infections are caused by organisms that are resistant to the effects of antibiotics. The United States Centers for Disease Control reports that at least 2 million people in the US become infected each year with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, resulting in at least 23,000 deaths. We know that soon after a new class of antibiotic is commercially available, resistant infections are reported, rendering the drug ineffective against treatment of those infections. Therefore, any environment with high levels of antibiotics is likely to harbor high levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When antibiotics are used in the home, hospital or farm, the surrounding environment is likely to become exposed due to antibiotics excreted in feces, discarding of unused prescriptions, agricultural run-off, and spread through waterways. In this CURE Course, students will determine if the presence of antibiotic-resistant microbes in the environment is linked to resistant infections.

Antibiotic Resistance Stream taught by: Dr. Kari Debbink

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Course Outline: HIV-1 protease plays an important role in viral replication and maturation, making it one of the most attractive targets for antiretroviral therapy. To design new effective inhibitors that are able to combat drug resistance in mutant HIV-1 proteases, it is essential to gain further understanding about the mechanisms by which the proposed inhibitors deactivate the wild type and mutant HIV-1 protease variants. CURE students will explore the interactions between drug analogs and HIV-1 protease through molecular docking, binding free energy calculations, and molecular dynamics simulations, all to help design better drugs against HIV-1 proteases.

Bioinformatics Stream taught by: Dr. Konda Reddy Karnati

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Course Outline: Staphylococcus aureus has developed resistance to multiple drugs and is considered one of the most resistant bacterial pathogens. This resistance is effective against the most modern penicillin derivatives including methicillin. As a facultative intracellular pathogen, S. aureus can survive inside the cells by evading the host immune system and most of the available therapeutics targeting Gram-positive bacteria. S. aureus derived EsxA is hypothesized to play role in the intracellular survival of the bacteria. To establish its structure and function, it is important to express and purify recombinant EsxA. In this presentation, students will present the cloning strategy of S. aureus derived EsxA that will be used to express recombinant protein.

Applied Biotechnology Stream taught by Dr. Supriyo Ray

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Course Outline: Bananas are one of the world’s most important fruits and a staple food, especially for tropical and subtropical countries. It provides food security to millions of people around the world and contributes to local economies. Bananas can become susceptible to environmental onslaught such as infection, stress, and more, which can threaten the economy and food security of many.

Genetic Engineering Stream taught by: Dr. Supriyo Ray

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Course Outline: As human populations expand and natural landscapes become scarce, it is increasingly important to understand how animals and plants can survive in and adapt to cities, suburbs, and other human-modified landscapes. For animals, persistence and health in human-dominated landscapes is closely tied to their ability to find high-quality food.

In this field-based CURE, we will identify a focal species that thrives in both human-modified and natural environments near Bowie, MD. The overall aim of this research will be to understand how the study species shifts its diet and related aspects of its ecology in the presence of humans. Students will work in groups to design their own sub-projects, which may focus feeding ecology or related, pre-defined topics such as feeding behavior, movement, diet-related morphology (e.g. wing shape or bill morphology), food availability, or diet-linked ornamentation.

Field Biology Stream taught by Dr. Anne Wiley

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Course Outline: In Organic Chemistry 2, students will explore the effects of reactants with various electronic and steric properties on a novel reaction. Students will then use known purification and characterization techniques to evaluate their reactions. As a class, students will compare their results and make a conclusion about the steric and electronic requirements of the reaction. The results of this project can be applied to total synthesis, drug discovery and drug delivery. Students will get the opportunity to apply the techniques they've learned to a real-life project. The use of "many hands," a unique property of CURE courses, allows several reactions to be tested simultaneously.

Drug Discovery Stream taught by Dr. Jacqueline Smith

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