Biochemistry Holiday Letter 2005
Dear alumni and friends of Biochemistry,
Greetings from Purdue's Department of Biochemistry! I
hope that this has been a successful year for all of you and
that 2006 provides joy, hope and intellectual challenges.
This letter gives me an informal setting to reflect upon the
news of the Department and our alumni over the past year.
A substantial recruiting effort during the past year resulted
in the hiring of three new Biochemistry faculty members.
Fred Gimble joined us as an Associate Professor from Texas A&M Biotechnology Institute
(Houston, TX) where he started his independent career. His research involves engineering yeast
homing endonucleases for potential use in genome repair. Also, Fred's wife, Amy Davidson,
joined the Department of Chemistry as an Associate Professor. Amy's research is focused on the
structure and function of ABC transporters in mammalian cells. Jim Clemens arrived this fall as
an Assistant Professor after finishing postdoctoral work at UCLA. Some of you will remember
that Jim received his M.S. from Biochemistry (1992) and then earned his Ph.D. with Jack Dixon
at the University of Michigan. Jim works on a remarkable Drosophila gene called Dscam that is
involved in neuron connection specificity. It produces thousands of protein isoforms as a result
of alternative mRNA splicing events. Xiaoqi Liu will join us in April as an Assistant Professor.
Xiaoqi was recruited from Harvard University with support from the Purdue Cancer Center and
the Walther Cancer Institute. His research program on Polo-like kinase 1 and its role in
carcinogenesis will strengthen both the Cancer Center and the Department's research group in
cell cycle regulation (Harry Charbonneau and Mark Hall). More details regarding the research of
our new faculty members will appear in next summer's Annual Report.
Mark Hermodson continues to provide administrative leadership at the University. Although he
will step down as Interim Associate Dean of Agriculture at the end of December to make way for
Sonny Ramaswamy (Kansas State U.) who will assume the permanent post, he has already
started in his new position as Interim Director of the Bindley Biosciences Center in Discovery
Park. When Mark is not juggling duties for various administrative positions on campus he enjoys
visiting his new grandson (Amy's child) in Minnesota. Klaus Herrmann and Elke moved back
to Germany this summer. Their new house literally backs
up against the North Sea with a large (and hopefully solid)
dike between them and the water. In November Klaus
cruised on the snow-laden Cauldon Canal in England on
Vic RodwelFs narrowboat, Willoughby. Vic has enjoyed
traveling the canals in recent years as part owner of a canal
boat. Clint Chappie served a term as President of the
Phytochemical Society of North America in 2005. A
publication by Steve Broyles and his former student,
Jaewook Oh (Ph.D. 2004) was selected for the "spotlight"
section of the Journal of Virology (Oct. 2005 issue). The
paper described the recruitment of nuclear proteins to the
DNA replication complexes of vaccinia virus in the
cytoplasm of an infected cell. Vaccinia virus replication is of particular interest because of its