Bassler is an associate professor of molecular biology.  Her research efforts are focused on elucidating the molecular mechanisms of intracellular communication between bacteria.  Specifically, she studies quorum sensing, a term that refers to a bacterium's ability to detect and respond to increases in population density.  This phenomenon was originally described in a pair of luminous marine vibrios, Vibrio harveyi and Vibrio fischeri.   These bacteria release a low molecular weight hormone-like molecule called an autoinducer.  As the population increases, the concentration of the autoinducer also increases, eventually exceeding a threshold stimulatory concentration that triggers the enzymatic reactions that lead to bioluminescence.

Bassler's group has shown that V. harveyi produces two autoinducers, referred to as AI-1 and AI-2, each of which is detected by a different sensor protein.  Her group has demonstrated that V. harveyi use AI-1 to communicate with its own species and use AI-2 to communicate with other bacterial species.  Extending these studies, Bassler has established that AI-2 is found in many other species of bacteria, most notably among pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, and Vibrio cholerae.  It appears that quorum sensing is critical in the pathogenesis of these organisms.  Her data suggest that the pathogens use quorum sensing to prevent the premature release of virulence factors following infection.  It appears that the invading pathogen does not release virulence factors until the population has had the opportunity to increase its numbers following infection.  In this way, the pathogen can establish itself without releasing compounds that alert the host's immune system to its presence.  Her work has led to the realization that bacterial communication is widespread, and it has suggested new strategies for combating difficult to treat bacterial infections.  Her work has led to attempts to develop a new class of anti-microbial compounds that target the proteins that mediate quorum sensing in pathogens.

• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant for Undergraduate Research Opportunities to the LSU College of Basic Sciences
• Louisiana Alliance for Minority Participation (LAMP) (a Board of Regents/National Science Foundation Program) grant to the LSU College of Basic Sciences
• National Science Foundation, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) grants and supplements to the Department of Chemistry; Department of Biological Sciences, Division of Biochemistry; the LSU and Southern University Departments of Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry
• LSU Chapter of Sigma Xi Scientific Society
• Research grants of individual researchers

This summer marks the end of an era.  After 14 years, Mark Hafner has stepped down as Director of the Museum of Natural Science to reclaim his role as curator and professor.  Of course, during his tenure as Director, Mark was also a full-time curator and professor, so his job change is one of relief more than direction.

Given this major milestone in the Museum’s history, it is worthwhile to take stock of Mark’s contributions, both long and short term.  Let me start with some long term things.  I should also interject that in many of his accomplishments Mark received the encouragement and help of other curators and professors in the University, but he was the spearhead.

Mark has pushed the Museum graduate students relentlessly to obtain their own funding for research and to publish papers.  He used the Museum’s scanty funds only as a supplemental carrot, as payment for hard work and productivity.  As a result, the Museum has produced some of the clearest thinking, most self-sufficient, and competent young natural historians in the country.  In just the last five years, Museum students have raised $794,000 in research funds, they have published 55 papers, and they have won outstanding presentation awards at the last three American Ornithologists’ Union meetings and at the most recent meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the International Society for Conservation Biology.  (These awards were won by six different students.)  One benefit of these achievements is that the Museum curators enjoy a steady stream of inquiries from potential applicants for graduate study at LSU.

Mark has pushed the Museum curators equally hard.  All of us can attest to the bite of his annual reports, which were relentlessly quantitative and honest about our scholarship, grantsmanship, teaching, and service to the community.  Chastising one’s colleagues is a thankless task, sure to invoke animosity.  However, Mark’s whip-cracking had the opposite effect.  The Museum Curators have been remarkably productive and form a cohesive, collegial group like no other that I have known.  In the last five years, the Curators have raised $3.3 million dollars in research funds, published 75 peer reviewed papers, been ranked among the top teachers in our departments, and provided a remarkable range of services to the University, community, and nation.

Perhaps Mark’s most profound, long term contribution has been the establishment and development of the Museum’s molecular genetics program.  This thrust began with Mark’s own research and grew through a series of important initiatives.  To name just a few, these include the establishment of the Collection of Genetic Resources in 1979, funding a national workshop on frozen tissue collections in 1982, funding the construction of the Museum’s molecular laboratory in 1988, procurement of a $1.3 million grant to develop an interdisciplinary center in molecular evolution in Louisiana, and hiring four molecular systematists as Museum curators  (Bob Zink, Fred Sheldon, Jim McGuire, and Robb Brumfield, who is soon to arrive).  As a result of Mark’s vision, the Museum now has the most preeminent collection of vertebrate genetic resources in the world and is internationally renowned for its research in vertebrate molecular systematics.  If you add to the mix the scholars in evolution in the departments of Biological Sciences, Entomology, Forestry Wildlife & Fisheries, Geography and Anthropology, and Curriculum and Instruction, LSU has one of the finest programs in evolutionary studies in the country.

In the last years of his tenure, Mark became a particularly dynamic Museum director and improved the Museum’s lot in many ways.  For example, Mark obtained for the Museum and the other LSU natural history collections the designation “Louisiana Museum of Natural History.”  This name brought substantial status to the Museum and protected it from newer, essentially commercial, ventures that wanted to use the “State Museum” moniker to raise money.  Mark established a Museum web site and also raised funds to connect all the collections in the Louisiana Museum of Natural History to it.  Mark spearheaded the hiring of Jennifer Chidsey as Curator of Education.  Although Jennifer left the Museum after two years, the experiment yielded substantial publicity for the Museum and indirectly resulted in two endowed professorships for Museum curators and enhanced funding from the LSU administration for public education.  It also forced the Museum curators to do some soul searching. Mark and Jennifer raised funds for two inspections of the Museum by outside consultants, one of exhibits and another of the Museum as a whole.  As a result of these departmental reviews, the Museum is now concentrating development efforts on its main strength--research and graduate training--rather than exhibits.  Once we consolidate our research and teaching programs with a substantial endowment, then we can worry about raising money for a new building with modern exhibits.

In addition to these administrative accomplishments, I must add Mark’s achievements as a teacher and scholar. These are all the more noteworthy, as they accrued while Mark was mired in Museum paperwork and worrying about how to pay the Museum’s bills.  Mark won LSU’s top award as a professor in 1996:  the LSU Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award. In 2000, he received the Tiger Athletic Foundation Undergraduate Teaching Award.  In 1991, he received the Faculty Teaching Award from the LSU Student Government Association.  While Director of the Museum, Mark raised as a principal investigator $2.5 million in grants and published 47 papers.  In recognition for these achievements, Mark was named the George H. Lowery, Jr., Professor of Natural Science in 2000.

I am sure that this recount of his deeds will embarrass Mark, and he won’t like the publicity a bit.  But that is too bad;  it is his own doing. --Frederick Sheldon

• N. Zhang , L. Barber, and M. Blackwell. Population Genetics of Dogwood Anthracnose Fungus (Discula destructiva Redlin).
• M. Blackwell, D. J. Longstreth, C. David, and S. A. Barker. Glycine betaine in fungi.
• S.-O. Suh, J. V. McHugh, and M. Blackwell. Yeasts from the gut of Coleoptera: taxonomic characteristics and molecular phylogeny.

John Battista was an invited speaker at the 2001 FASEB Summer Research Conference on Genetic Recombination and Genome Rearrangements in Snowmass, CO (21 July - 26 July).  His talk was entitled "Reducing cellular DNA content does not reduce Deinococcus radiodurans R1 survival following exposure to UV and ionizing radiation."

And once again, John Battista was an invited speaker at the 38th Meeting of the Society for Cryobiology (29 July to 1 August 2001) at the  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Scotland.  His talk was entitled "Search for Adaptations to Dehydration in Microorganisms Using Molecular Tools.

• Noor, M. A. F., K. L. Grams*, L. A. Bertucci*, and J. Reiland. Chromosomal inversions and the reproductive isolation of species, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, in press. (*undergraduate!) Abstract. Recent genetic studies have suggested that many genes contribute to differences between closely related species that prevent gene exchange, particularly hybrid male sterility and female species preferences.  We have examined the genetic basis of hybrid sterility and female species preferences in Drosophila pseudoobscura and D. persimilis, two occasionally hybridizing North American species. Contrary to findings in other species groups, very few regions of the genome were associated with these characters, and these regions are also associated with fixed arrangement differences (inversions) between these species. From our  results, we propose a preliminary genic model whereby inversions may contribute to the speciation process, thereby explaining the abundance of arrangement differences between closely related species that co-occur geographically. We suggest that inversions create linkage groups that cause sterility to persist between hybridizing taxa. The maintenance of this sterility allows the species to persist in the face of gene flow longer than without such inversions, and natural selection will have a greater opportunity to decrease the frequency of interspecies matings.

 
• Zhu B.C.R., G. Henderson, F. Chen, H. Fei, and R.A. Laine . 2001.  Evaluation of Vetiver Oil and 7 Insect-Active Essential Oils Against the Formosan Subterranean Termite. J. Chemical Ecology 27: 1617-1625.
• Weir, A., and M. Blackwell. 2001. Extraction and PCR amplification of DNA from minute ectoparasitic fungi. Mycologia 93:802-806.
• X  4  Several papers have been accepted for publication from work conducted in the Brown laboratory. Patrick Bank's master's thesis on hydrocarbon

pollution effects on the fouling community has been accepted by Marine Environmental Research, and Susan Bolden's masters thesis on
relocation as a conservation tool for freshwater mussels has been accepted by the Journal of the North American Benthological Society.  Brown and Banks also had a recent publication on the community ecology of  Louisiana freshwater mussels published in the journal Aquatic Conservation, and Brown published a chapter on freshwater snail ecology and systematics in Thorp and Covich's book on the ecology and systematics of  freshwater invertebrates.