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News
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- July 15, 2010.
Together with UF Center for Precollegiate Education and Training (http://www.cpet.ufl.edu), Dr. Chen and Dr. Nick Polfer from Department of Chemistry have organized a proteomics content knowledge workshop for 30 high school teachers from the state of Florida. Graduate students from the two laboratories were actively involved in the workshop. Teachers have not only learned basic theory and principles of mass spectrometry and proteomics technologies, but also gained hands-on experience of protein extraction from tissues, gel electrophoresis, image analysis, protein trypsin digestion and peptide mass fingerprinting technology. This annual workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation.
- July 1, 2010.
Jennifer Parker has officially joined Chen lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome Jennifer! Jennifer is from Gastonia, North Carolina and received her B.S. in Plant Biology with a minor in Genetics from North Carolina State University. 
A new high-end mass spectrometer LTQ-Orbitrap system including a front-end ultra performance nanoflow HPLC has been purchased and will be set up in July in the Proteomics Facility of ICBR. This instrument will enable many capabilities including label-free protein quantification, high resolution mass spec, posttranslational modification analysis and top-down proteomics.
- June 15, 2010.
Welcome Kiva Ebert and Isabel Branstrom (both from A.W. Dreyfoos Jr. High School of Arts at Palm Beach, Florida) to Chen lab for summer research. Both Kiva and Isabel are sponsored by the UF Student Science Training Program (http://www.cpet.ufl.edu/sstp/sstpdates.html) and the National Science Foundation. They will gain hands-on research experience as scientists for six weeks. Kiva will work on Guard cell gene cloning and functional analysis under the direct supervision of Mengmeng Zhu, a third year Ph.D. student. Isabel will work on glucosinolate metabolism under the direct supervision of Yazhou Chen, a second-year Ph.D. student.
 
- June 1, 2010.
Welcome Yazhou Chen, Khader Ghneim and Dr. Cecilia Silva-Sanchez to the Chen lab! Yazhou Chen is a Ph.D. student coming from Northeast Forestry University, China. He has been awarded a graduate fellowship from the Chinese Scholarship Council for conducting Ph.D. thesis research overseas. Khader Ghneim is an undergraduate student from Georgetown University in Washington DC. He will do summer research in the Proteomics Facility. Dr. Silva-Sanchez came from Mexico City. She will work on protein posttranslational modifications using mass spectrometry based technologies.
 
- May 7, 2010.
Congratulations to Yan He for passing his Ph.D. defense!
He has been officially awarded the Ph.D. degree.
- April 15, 2010.
Jin Koh has joined the Chen lab to conduct some proteomics work of Tragpogon as part of his Ph.D. project.
- March 9, 2010.
Congratulations to Mengmeng Zhu for passing her proposal defense! She is officially a Ph.D. candidate.
- February 2, 2010.
Jennifer Parker has completed her rotation project on redox regulation of Arabidopsis AtIPMDH proteins in the Chen lab. She has given a great rotation seminar.
- January 5, 2010.
Welcome 2010! Another paper from the Chen lab has been accepted for publication. It is a proteomic analysis of salt tolerance by Pang Q, Chen S, Dai S, Chen Y, Wang Y, Yan X. Comparative proteomics of salt tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and Thellungiella halophila. Journal of Proteome Research, in press.
Congratulations to the authors!
- November 27, 2009.
The Chen lab has two new papers accepted for publication. One is a report of AtIPMDH1 gene function by He Y, Mawhinney TP, Preuss ML, Schroeder AC, Chen B, Abraham L, Jez JM, Chen S. A redox-active isopropylmalate dehydrogenase functions in the biosynthesis of glucosinolates and leucine in Arabidopsis. The Plant Journal, in press.
The other is the proteomics work of ABA signaling in guard cells by Zhu M, Simons B, Zhu N, Oppenheimer DG, Chen S. Analysis of abscisic acid responsive proteins in Brassica napus guard cells by multiplexed isobaric tagging. Journal of Proteomics, in press.
Congratulations to the authors and keep up the good work!
- October 15, 2009.
Mengmeng Zhu has presented her recent results on guard cell hormone signaling at the NSF Research Day Meeting.
- September 8, 2009.
A high-end mass spectrometer QSTAR Elite LC-MS/MS system (AB Sciex Inc.) funded by Dr. Chen's NIH grant has been set up and running samples. High quality iTRAQ quantification data can be expected from this system.
- August 5, 2009.
Chen lab together with Dr. Sally Assmann lab organized a three-day National Proteomics Workshop and Symposium. Over 100 participants from the United States and other countries have attended the workshop and symposium, which was partly supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Please see http://proteomics.centers.ufl.edu for more information about the event.
- July 16, 2009.
Dr. Chen has received the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award for junior faculty: the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. The award is for “Understanding Molecular Networks Controlling Plant Glucosinolate Metabolism”.
The CAREER award supports junior faculty who "exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. CAREER teacher-scholars are selected on the basis of creative, career-development plans that effectively integrate innovative research and education."
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- June 11, 2009.
Dr. Xiaofen Jin, from Dr. Sarah Assmann's lab at the Pennsylvania State University, arrives today to collaborate on the guard cell metabolomics project. She will work closely with Qiuying Pang and Mengmeng Zhu from the Chen lab on guard cell metabolite analysis, using LC-MS technology. They will also test protocols for the upcoming
Proteomics Workshop, to be held in early August.
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Jennifer Sanford
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Kwami Gyimah & Justin Goldsmith
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Bryno Gay
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- March 10, 2009.
Ms. Johanna M. Strul, an undergraduate majoring in chemical engineering at the University of Florida, has won the HHMI Science for Life undergraduate research award. Johanna's research project in Chen lab is on the characterization of chloroplast thioredoxin regulated redox proteins. She is supervised by a third year graduate student Yan He and Dr. Chen.
For more information on this award, visit UF's Science for Life website.
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- January 10, 2009.
The Chen lab has had two papers accepted for publication.
One is a report of redox proteomics work by Sophie Alvarez, Gordon Wilson and Dr. Chen:
Alvarez S, Wilson GH, Chen S. 2009. Determination of in vivo disulfide-bonded proteins in Arabidopsis . Journal of Chromatography B, 877: 101-104.
The other is the guard cell proteomics work by Mengmeng Zhu, Shaojun Dai, Scott McClung, Xiufeng Yan and Dr. Chen:
Zhu M, Dai S, McClung S, Yan X, Chen S. 2009. Functional differentiation of Brassica napus guard cells and mesophyll cells revealed by comparative proteomics. Molecular & Cellular Proteomics (Papers in Press).
Congratulations to the authors and keep up the good work!
In the year 2008, Dr. Chen has been involved in a total of 12 scientific publications.
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- August 15, 2008.
High school students Gordon Wilson, Sau-Hyon Cho and Alec Fufidio have successfully completed their summer research in our lab.
Everyone was greatly inspired by the experience. Each student gave a presentation explaining their project and the work they accomplished.
The Chen lab held a farewell party for them.
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- August 15, 2008.
High school students Gordon Wilson, Sau-Hyon Cho and Alec Fufidio have successfully completed their summer research in our lab. Everyone was greatly inspired by the experience. Each student gave a presentation explaining their project and the work they accomplished. The Chen lab held a farewell party for them.
- August 1, 2008.
Science News: Protein Fingerprinting Made Easy.
Combining traditional experimental methods of molecular biology with computational methods of artificial intelligence, a group of researchers from Ruder Boškovic Instititute and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from Zagreb, Croatia, demonstrated a novel approach for producing ‘protein fingerprints’ of diverse tissues. This result could lead to the development of new, more convenient methods in medical diagnostics. For details please click here.
- July 1, 2008.
Mr. Gordon Wilson (from Spruce Creek High School, Florida) earned First place in the 2008 Florida Junior Academy of Sciences science fair competition.
(http://www.floridaacademyofsciences.org/FJASnews26_3.pdf).
His project on glucosinolate metabolism has also been awarded the Third award at the International Science Fair held in Atlanta
(http://sciserv.org/isef/results/grnd2008.pdf).
This is an incredible success. Gordon worked on redox proteomics of Arabidopsis glucosinolate metabolism in Chen lab last summer supported by the UF Student Science Training Program (SSTP)
(http://www.cpet.ufl.edu/sstp/sstpdates.html).
His result has also been presented at professional conferences and submitted for publication. For both science fair events Gordon participated, he earned the highest place of any SSTP project from the summer of 2007. Gordon is very excited and he is going to come back to Chen lab and continue his research in July and August.
- June 30, 2008
Dr. Chen is hosting a ‘omics’ content knowledge workshop for 30 high school teachers from the state of Florida. The workshop is organized by UF Center for Precollegiate Education and Training (http://www.cpet.ufl.edu). The workshop contains 45 min lecture on ‘omics’ and systems biology, 30 min tour of proteomics modules and on-line resources (http://www.moleculedetective.org), and about an hour live proteomics and mass spectrometry demonstrations. The workshop takes place in the education lab and the proteomics facility of Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnological Research (ICBR) (http://www.biotech.ufl.edu/about.html).
- June 16, 2008.
Welcome Sau-Hyon Cho (from St. Petersburg High School) and Alec M. Fufidio (from Flagler Palm Coast High School) to Chen lab for summer research. Both San-Hyon and Alec are sponsored by the UF Student Science Training Program (http://www.cpet.ufl.edu/sstp/sstpdates.html) and will gain hands-on research experience as scientists for six weeks. Sau-Hyon will work on Arabidopsis proteomics under the direct supervision of Dr. Shaojun Dai, a Visiting Professor from Northeast Forestry University, China. Alex will work on glucosinolate metabolism under the direct supervision of Mengmeng Zhu, a second-year Ph.D. student.
- June 9, 2008.
Congratulations to Yan He for his official entering the Ph.D. candidacy! Some of his work is going to be covered in Botany newsletters.
- June 6, 2008
Congratulations to Dr. Chen, who just learned that one of his proposals to the National Science Foundation has been recommended for funding. Drs. Alice Harmon and David Oppenheimer and their lab members hold a celebration with Chen lab members in Genetics Institute conference room 436.
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