as the rotor turns... news and announcements
Upcoming Events
January 2009
January 7: Donghua's article appeared online today at Angew. Chem.. Congrats to Donghua, et al!
January 4: The Rienstra Group would like to welcome their newest member Mike Brothers from the Chemical Biology division. Welcome to the group Mike!
November 2008
November 11: Andy passed his preliminary exam exam today! Congratulations!
November 7-9: Gautam presented his poster at the McKnight Biophysics Competition this weekend. Great job Gautam!
October 2008
October 30: The Rienstra Group would like to welcome their two newest members Mary Clay and Chris Corcoran from the Physical Chemistry division. Welcome to the group guys!
October 17: Gautam was selected to give a poster at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX for the Frank and Sara McKnight Prize in Undergraduate Biophysics or Quantitative Biology. Way to go Gautam and good luck in Dallas!
October 15: Chad gave a talk at the ISSX 15th North American Regional Meeting in San Diego, California entitled "Structural Analysis of Membrane-Bound P450s by Magic-Angle Spinning NMR".
September 2008
September 25: Lindsay passed her preliminary exam today! Way to go Lindsay!.
September 5: Read more about the science debate issues from the two presidental nomiees at sciencedebate2008.com.
August 2008
August 27: Chad gave his Founder's Metal talk at the XXIIIrd International Conferences on Magnetic Resonance In Biological Systems (ICMRBS). Way to go Chad!
August 22: Request For Action! Contact your Senator and Representatives in Congress to support Domestic Supplemental Bill that includes additional funding for NIH!
August 18: Chad was featured in the News from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's News Bureau in the article entitled "Improved technique determines structure in membrane proteins." Way to go Chad!
August 17: Chad gave a talk entitled "High field and fast MAS NMR for probing protein chemistry and structure" at the 236th National ACS Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
July 2008
July 15: Congrats to Chad and coworkers for receiving a NIH High End Instrument Grant! This will be used to purchase a high-field SSNMR spectrometer for the School of Chemical Sciences NMR Facility. You can read more about it here!.
July 1: Chad has been selected to receive the Founders Medal from the International Conferences on Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems (ICMRBS). He will give a plenary lecture at the ICMRBS in San Diego on August 27th.
June 2008
June 12: Andy gave a talk at the Central Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Columbus, Ohio.
June 11: Chad and Kathy gave talks at the Central Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Columbus, Ohio. Poster presentations were also given by Aleks, Heather, John, Lindsay, and Luisel at the meeting.
June 6: Aleks, Andy and Lindsay presented posters at the 6th Annual Biophysics and Computational Biology Symposium at UIUC.
June 3: Congratulations to Heather for completing the oral defense of her thesis entitled "Examining Molecular Interactions of Proteins by Isotopic Labeling, Sample Formulation and Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy!" Way to go Heather!
June 1: Congratulations to Kathy for being the East Central Illinois Local Section of the ACS Women Chemist Committee’s featured member of the month!.
May 2008
May 29: Trent's PNAS, and Donghua's JACS papers appeared in an aricle titled "Snapshots from the NMR frontier" (Volume 5, Number 5) in the May 2008 issue of Chemistry World (pdf,html).
May 29: Gemma received a renewal of her fellowship The Caja Madrid. Congratulations Gemma!
May 21: Chad gave a talk at the Gordon Research Conference on Computational Aspects- Biomolecular NMR in Luuca, Italy entitled "Can Magic-Angle Spinning NMR Protein Structures Exceed the Quality of Crystallography and Solution NMR?"
May 11: Trent, Ben, Kathy, and Heather all participated in commencement today! Congrats on being hooded everyone! Reika and Dan also graduated today! Dan will be heading to graduate school at University of Wisconsin Madison and Reika will be attending pharmacy school in Minnesota in the fall.
April 2008
April 24: Kathy presented the oral defense of her thesis today. Way to go, Dr. Kloepper!
April 23: Gemma found out that she passed her Biophysics Qualifying Exam today! Way to go Gemma!
April 19: Gautam gave a talk titled "Determining pKa Values of the Protein GB1 from Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" and Reika and Dan presented posters on their research at the Women Chemists' Committee Undergraduate Research Symposium. Awesome job presenting everyone!
April 16: Gemma passed her SPEAK test on the first try! Good job, Gemma!
March 2008
March 13: Heather gave a talk titled "Elucidation of Proton Pumping Mechanism for the 144 kDa Cytochrome bo3 Oxidase using Solid-state NMR" the 49th Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference in Pacific Grove, California. Great job Heather!
March 9-14: Andy, Donghua, and Lindsay all presented posters at the 49th Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference in Pacific Grove, California.
March 6: Luisel presented her literature seminar in Chemical Biology titled "What do HIV, Silk and Hydrogels Have in Common?" Good job Luisel!
February 2008
February 21: Ben defended his thesis today! Congrats Dr. Wylie!
February 12: Ying completed her thesis defense today! Congratulations Dr. Li!
February 4: Lindsay gave a talk at the Women In Chemistry's Brown Bag Lunch titled "Obtaining Chemical Properties and Structures of Proteins using Solid-state NMR." Well done Lindsay!
January 2008
January 29: Congrats to Donghua! His paper "High-Performance Solvent Suppression for Proton-Detected Solid-State NMR" has been accepted to J. Magn. Reson. Way to go!
January 28: Chad gave a talk entitled "Magic-Angle Spinning Methods for Assignment and Structure of Large Proteins" at the NMR: a tool for biology VIII conference held at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France.
January 15: The Franks, et al. SSNMR structure paper was accepted to PNAS! Congrats to Trent, Ben, Andy, Heather, and Gautam!
January 7: The Rienstra group welcomes their newest group member, Gemma Comellas. Gemma is a joint student with Klaus Schulten and is going to be working on synuclein. Welcome to the group Gemma!
January 1: Congratulations to Luisel for receiving the Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research! Way to go Luisel!
December 2007
December 25: The Frericks Schmidt, et al. GB1 crystal structure has been released on the PDB website! Check out 2QMT!
December 19: Congratulations to Ben and Chad on their acceptance of their review going into J. Chem. Phys.
December 19: The Zhou, et al. JACS paper has been selected by the Faculty of 1000 Biology Must Read List. Awesome job Donghua!
December 7: Congratulations to Lindsay, who has been named to the Molecular Biophysics Training Grant, effective December 15!
December 6: Donghua's GB1 structure, 2ju6, was released at the PDB today.
December 4: Congrats to Heather, Lindsay, Ben, John B., and our collaborators for the appearance of their J. Phys. Chem. B paper online today!
November 2007
November 29: Trent defended his thesis today! Congratulations, Dr. Franks!
November 16: The Kijac, Li, Sligar & Rienstra Biochemistry paper has been selected as a "Hot Article". Please follow the link.
November 10: Congratulations to Ying and Deb for the acceptance of the Li, et al. Protein Sci. paper! Way to go!
November 7: Aleks' paper has ALSO appeared online today, at Biochemistry.
November 7: Kathy's recently accepted Letter at J. Phys. Chem. B has appeared online!
November 3: Heather gave a great talk at the Chicago Area NMR Discussion Group, based on her recent publications. Way to go, Heather!
November 2: Kathy, Andy, Lindsay and Aleks presented posters at the Molecular Biophysics Training Grant Symposium.
November 1: Chad and Deb attended the NIH Roadmap Membrane Protein Production and Technologies Meeting.
October 2007
October 24: Chad was informed that the Executive Committee of the School of Chemical Sciences has recommended his tenure case to the College of LAS. Congratulations, Chad!
October 19: Congratulations to Ben and Lindsay on acceptance of their paper, "Isotropic Chemical Shifts in Magic-Angle Spinning NMR Spectra of Proteins" at Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. Published Online, November 5, 2007.
October 3: Congratulations to Heather, Lindsay, John B., Ben and our collaborators in the X-ray facility (Yi Gao and Scott Wilson) on the acceptance of Frericks et al. to J. Phys. Chem. B.
October 1: The Zhou et al. Angew. Chemie article has appeared online in Early View.
September 2007
September 29: Congrats to Aleks for giving a talk entitled "Magic-Angle Spinning Solid-state NMR Spectroscopy of Nanodisc-Embedded Human CYP3A4" at the XXVII Midwest Enzyme Chemistry Conference.
September 25: Congratulations to Dan Graesser, Ben, Andy and Trent on the acceptance of their paper "Long-range 19F-15N distance measurements in highly-13C,15N-enriched solid proteins with 19F-dephased REDOR shift (FRESH) spectroscopy" to Magn. Reson. Chem.
September 24: Congratulations to Julia George, Wendy Woods, John B., Kathy, Donghua, Kevin, Daniel and Zhi on the acceptance of their paper "Conformation-specific binding of alpha-synuclein to novel protein partners detected by phage display and NMR spectroscopy" to J. Biol. Chem. Published online, September 25, 2007.
September 24: Congratulations AGAIN (!) to Aleks and Ying on the acceptance of their paper, along with Steve Sligar, entitled "Magic-Angle Spinning Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy of Nanodisc-Embedded Human CYP3A4", at Biochemistry.
September 23: The Rienstra group will have an open house on Thursday, Oct. 4, from 6:15 to 7:30 pm. Chad will give an overview lecture in A133, followed by a poster session in the hallway and atrium area. Food will be served to all those first year students starving not only for knowledge. The complete faculty presentation calendar is available at this link.
September 21: Congratulations to Aleks for winning the William and Lynn Jackson Poster Prize at the UIUC Biochemistry Fall Conference. Aleks' poster, entitled "Magic-Angle Spinning Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy of Nanodisc-Embedded Human CYP3A4", was judged as one of the top (out of 48) submissions! Aleks and Ying have submitted similar results for publication.
September 19: Chad presented his tenure seminar to the department, attended by over 150 people. Powerpoint and PDF files of the lecture are available here.
September 17: Congratulations to Lingling Chen, the Mueller Group, the Polenova Group and Chad on the acceptance of their paper "J-Based 2D Homonuclear and Heteronuclear Correlation in Solid-State Proteins" to Magn. Reson. Chem.
September 7: Heather was named the East Central Illinois Local Section of the ACS Women Chemist Committee’s featured member for September. You can read about her achievements here.
August 2007
August 27: Congratulations to Donghua and Gautam on the publication of their paper, “Proton-detected solid-state NMR spectroscopy of fully protonated proteins at 40 kHz magic-angle spinning”, in JACS.
August 12: Chad and Lindsay were named to the 2007 Spring ICES "incomplete list of teachers ranked as excellent by their students." Lindsay received the additional honor of being in the top 10% of instructors for her high ranking on “overall teaching effectiveness.”
August 9: Congratulations to Kathy, Donghua, and Ying on the acceptance of their paper, “Temperature-dependent sensitivity enhancement of solid-state NMR spectra of alpha-synuclein fibrils,” to J. Biomol. NMR.
August 1: Lindsay was named the East Central Illinois Local Section of the ACS Women Chemist Committee’s featured member for August. You can read about her achievements here.
August 1: Congratulations to Lindsay for receiving the University Block Grant (departmental fellowship).
July 2007
July 31: Heather was awarded the Merck graduate fellowship in analytical/physical chemistry for 2007-2008! Well done, Heather!
July 29: Congratulations to Donghua, John S., Andy, Trent, and Ben on the acceptance of their paper, “Solid-state protein structure determination with proton-detected triple resonance 3D magic-angle spinning NMR spectroscopy”, to Angewandte Chemie.
July 18: Congratulations to Donghua and Gautam on the acceptance of their paper, “Proton-detected solid-state NMR spectroscopy of fully protonated proteins at 40 kHz magic-angle spinning”, to JACS!
July 10: Trent, Kathy, and Ben's paper, “Four-dimensional heteronuclear correlation experiments for chemical shift assignment of solid proteins” was accepted at J. Biomol. NMR.
June 2007
June 17-22: Ying and Kathy presented their work in the poster session of the Gordon Research Conference: Magnetic Resonance in Biddeford, ME.
June 14: Andy has been awarded a traineeship in the Molecular Biology Training Program/Grant (MBTG). Way to go, Andy!
June 9-10: Heather presented a poster at the NMR of Metals in Biological Systems and Materials in Newark, DE.
May 2007
May 13: Kevin graduated today with a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Rhetoric. He will start in the fall at Berkeley working toward his PhD in physical chemistry.
May 3: Zhi passed his Biophysics Qualifying Exam. Congratulations, Zhi!
April 2007
April 22-27: Ben, Trent, and Donghua represented the Rienstra group at the 48th Experimental NMR Conference in Daytona, FL. Donghua also gave an oral presentation at the Varian Users' Meeting.
April 21: Kevin presented his research at the Women Chemists Committee Undergraduate Research Symposium at UIUC.
April 18: Ben, Lindsay, Heather, Gautam, Trent, and Chad were featured in C&E News Latest News in the spectroscopy article, "Faster Route to NMR Values." You can read the article at C&E News Online.
March 2007
March 23: Congratulations to Ben, Lindsay, Heather, Gautam, and Trent on the acceptance of their paper, “Chemical Shift Anisotropy Measurements of Amide and Carbonyl Resonances in a Microcrystalline Protein with Slow Magic-Angle Spinning NMR Spectroscopy” by JACS.
March 21: Kudos to Zhi for passing his SPEAK test on his first try!
March 3-7: Kathy and Ying presented their work at the Biophysical Society Meeting in Baltimore, MD. Kathy also received a travel award from the Biophysical Society.
February 2007
February 9: Congratulations to the Wylie family on their latest addition. Thomas Benjamin Wylie was born at 12:30 pm. He was 7 lb, 8 oz.