Last month's (14 May) awards ceremony for the graduate students, also was the occasion for noting the retirement of five faculty members since the departments merged three years ago.  Reading top left and clockwise: Thomas Dietz, William Lee, Ezzat Younathan, Simon Chang, and Joseph Woodring. For those who did not make it to the party, the affair was a great success.  The good food and drink was arranged by Charyl Thompson, and Marie Standifer arranged the lovely flowers and organized the decorations crew. Thanks also go to Bob Mirabello, in the Department of Horticulture, who loaned  most of the plants used to decorate the foyer of the Annex. The remainder of the plants used (several cycads and a fern) were our own, which Bob had graciously been keeping in the Horticulture shade house.  These plants have been returned to our greenhouse for use in the introductory biology program.  Those who helped by moving and arranging plants included Sung-Oui Suh, Daniel Ortiz-Barrientos, Bill Wischusen, and Charles Ramcharan.  See related picture below. (Photograph, Cindy Henk)

• ON THE GREEN GENE TRAIL (from Newsday)  THE FIRST TENTATIVE moves that got life out of the water and onto the land eons ago were apparently made by slimy green algae, scientists say, and coming ashore wasn't easy. According to paleobotanist [sic] Russell Chapman of Louisiana State University, the first algae that managed to gain residence on terra firma-finally kick-starting the evolution of land plants- must have come out of fresh water, not the sea. And, Chapman said, even though four distinct types of algae managed to come ashore, only one of them evolved enough complexity to eventually cover the land with vegetation, what we now call trees, shrubs, flowers and grass.  Nonetheless, all four species of pioneering algae can still be found on land, he said.  Click here to read on.
• And DEEP GREEN again (from the Baton Rouge Advocate) on the significance of  Cephaleuros virescens. See Russell Chapman, Debra Waters, and Juan Lopez-Bautista.
• LSU MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE has featured prominently in two recent national publications: 
• New York Times (8 May 2001)  ran an article on tissue collections, with lots of attention to LSU's Collection of Genetic Resources. Click here to read abstract of "Creating a Modern Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History are building a 21st century version of Noah's Ark. Except this time, ins..."
• New Yorker (14 May 2001) has an article on Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, with interviews and comments on Van Remsen (and Vern Wright of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries).
• From the TIMES (London) comes the news that William Thomas Stearn, CBE, botanist, born April, 16 1911, died May 9, 2001 at the age of 90. Stearn's "greatest contribution... lies in some 470 publications. Born in Cambridge, Stearn was the son of a coachman and grandson of the university rat-catcher. His love of natural history began as a child when he explored the hedgerows and fields of Suffolk during holidays on an uncle's Suffolk farm, and as a child he was more interested in birds than in plants. Stearn was a luminary to botanists all over the world, including those at LSU.
• In the last month several department members have been featured on the front page (but below the fold) of LSU Today.

Image of the sun from NASA: SOHO, Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT), full-field He II 304 Å images from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center [ 2001/06/19 07:19:41 ] Are you doing field work or exercising outside this summer?  You might want to check the following sites that provide information on ozone and air quality in Baton Rouge.  The first provides a three day ozone forecast.  Denise D'Abundo reminds us that people new to the Baton Rouge area may not realize how frequently ozone levels reach the unhealthy range. http://www.deq.state.la.us/evaluation/ozone/oz_today.asp http://www.deq.state.la.us/evaluation/ozone/aqi.htm http://www.deq.state.la.us/evaluation/ozone/index.htm

Congratulations to Jim McGuire for  an award from NSF for a new project:  The evolution of flight performance in hummingbirds.  The $303,755 award is for three years.  The NSF  Abstract:  A grant has been awarded to Drs. Jimmy A. McGuire of Louisiana State University and Robert Dudley of the University of Texas at Austin to investigate the role that morphology and physiology have played in the evolution of flight performance in hummingbirds. More specifically, they will generate a phylogenetic tree describing the species-level genealogy for 300 species of hummingbirds and will then use this genealogy as the framework for comparative analysis. To produce this tree, they will sequence five genes (one mitochondrial and 4 nuclear) and then analyze these genetic data by applying a recently developed model-based method of phylogenetic analysis. In the second component of the project, they are measuring flight performance across the diversity of hummingbirds to evaluate how variation in morphological design affects locomotor performance, and how hummingbirds that occur at high elevation compensate for reduced air density and oxygen content in this aerodynamically challenging environment.  The phylogenetic analysis is not only critical for statistical analysis of flight performance data, but will also be invaluable to the larger community of evolutionary biologists that utilize hummingbirds as the "model system" for their own investigations. This work is also of general importance because it will substantially improve current understanding of animal flight by utilizing comparative performance data. These data are extremely difficult to obtain for other vertebrate species, but tractable in hummingbirds because of their use of hovering flight.

. . .  and to John C. Larkin, who was awarded a grant of $330,000 by the NSF : Molecular genetics of cell differentiation in the Arabidopsis shoot epidermis. Abstract:  The process of cell differentiation is the process by which cells become specialized during the development of multicellular organisms.  Although a great deal is known about how cell differentiation is initiated, considerably less is known about how these early events control the actual events leading to cellular specialization.  The shoot epidermal hairs (trichomes) of Arabidopsis are now well-established as a model for the study of plant cell differentiation.  The long-term goal of this research program is to uncover the molecular mechanisms connecting the trichome cell fate decision to the generation of the mature trichome phenotype.  We are particularly interested in the endoreduplication cell cycle during trichome development.  The specific goals of the proposed research are to identify direct downstream transcriptional targets of the trichome initiation regulators GL3 and GL1, to isolate the SIM gene and determine its function in the endoreduplication cell cycle, and to isolate extragenic modifiers of sim mutants.

Keep watching this section because many more department members "pushed the FastLane button" to make the 15 June NSF deadline!

Bourdy, G., S. J. DeWalt, L. R. Chavez de Michel, A. Roca, E. Deharo, V. Muoz, L. Balderrama, C. Quenevo, and A. Gimenez. 2000. Medicinal plants uses of the Tacana, an Amazonian Bolivian ethnic group. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 70:87-109.

Mark Hafner noted:
The latest issue of the prestigious Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution has three articles involving the following LSU authors:

• David McClellan and Kevin McCracken (recent Ph.D. graduates), p. 917
• Sung-Oui Sui and Meredith Blackwell, p. 995
• Axa Rocha (recent Ph.D. graduate), John Fleeger, and David Foltz, p.1088

Beware the Look Alike Chlorophyllum molybdites (left and right), the most common cause of mushroom poisoning in the Baton Rouge area, can be found up to twelve months a year when there is adequate moisture and temperatures are mild.  However, the season when the mycology lab gets the most calls is in the summer.  The long-stalked mushrooms of this species are toxic to most people (although a few seem never to be affected) and cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms. The toxin has not been studied well but is reported to be of a very high molecular weight. The underground mycelium (thread-like body) gives rise to the mushrooms, which bear the spores.  They often occur in circles known as fairy rings and are prominent along highways I-10 and I-12 just east of Baton Rouge and in lawns all over the city.  Although C. molybdites is easily confused with several edible mushrooms, the musky green spores that color the gills at maturity (right) for which the species is named are a giveaway for identification --but not until the mushrooms are past the stage when they might be picked for eating!  On one occasion an LSU student became so dehydrated after eating the mushrooms, he went into anaphylactic shock and was hospitalized and on a respirator for several days; however, few deaths are reported from C. molybdites. (Photographs, David Longstreth)

Mohamed  (left) feeds Megan (right) Noor  at the awards ceremony (14 May) for the graduate students and retiring faculty members. (Photograph, Cindy Henk)