A late Champion update

Monday, February 09, 2009

Erica A. Champion successfully defended her thesis Friday July 18th, 2008. Attended by an audience of near 100 persons, Erica showcased her Utp6 protein with a tip of her half-a-tetratricopeptide repeat (HAT). After stunning her committee with her results and impeccable presentation skills, Erica, her parents, the lab, and her friends enjoyed some potent potables with noted notables, including her former advisers Chandler Fulton and Elaine Lai, pictured below.

We're all proud of you, Erica!

(and we hope you'll come back often to help us with the crosswords and oreo consumption)





posted by Kat

Freezin' for a Reason

David Dunbar, alumnus of the Baserga lab, has taken the plunge! David chose to help raise money for Eastern Pennsylvania Special Olympics by wearing nothing but his bathing suit in the frigid Delaware River. Read more about what this Cabrini College professor did here.


posted by Kat

Bennett sees the forest through the trees

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

This summer, the Baserga lab mourns the loss of their undergraduate, Bennett.

"But now who will trouble shoot my protein purifications!" Emily cried.

The department of MB&B was immensely pleased with his progress while here, especially his work on saving the rainforest, one bonsai tree at a time. For this, he was awarded the prestigious Paul Siegler Memorial Prize, and given a token to wear during the commencement ceremonies (see pictures below).

Bennett now continues on to a more illustrious career in Boston, evaluating the economic and environmental impact of picking up peanut shells from the Green Monster after Red Sox games and feeding them to free-range swine.




posted by Kat

Christmas in July

Emptying out old pictures from the lab camera, Emily and Kat hit the jackpot.

What do the Basergas do on a snow day in lab? Well, Franziska works harder because the roads aren't safe to drive home on, Erica bugs Bennett for more slave labor - I mean data, Laura works with radioactivity, Neal doesn't come in because he's shoveling his driveway, Mike tends to his family, and the youngest members? Well, they just play. Outside. Because Kat didn't have a snowy childhood in Florida.


Below are pictures of the snow person Kat, Kara, and Emily created, as well as the snow yeast, made especially for the Baserga lab, by the Baserga lab.





posted by Kat

Definition of a biochemist

Monday, February 25, 2008

(lifted from The Daily Transcript, Taxonomy of the Sciences)

Biochemist: Basically biochemists play with proteins. Usually this involves fancy machines that cost a ton of money. Proteins are subjected to centrifugation, electrophoresis, fast protein liquid chromatography, gel exclusion chromatography .... Incidentally these techniques are just sophisticated ways of pushing and shoving proteins around. If enough proteins clump together, biochemists get excited and call the clump a complex. If the complex is really big, the biochemist will call it the somethingosome. If you ask a biochemist to show you pretty data, he/she'll show you his/her bands. Biochemists kill cells for their precious bodily fluids.(author: The Daily Transcript)


posted by Erica