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Engineering Better Business Practices • Project Asia Update • Improving Doctor Training
Tetrahymena Gets its Own “Wiki” • STEM Scholars • BU Awards • Grant Activity

Nick Stover, assistant professor of biology, has been passionate about single-celled organisms since his graduate school days.

While working at a ciliate lab, he became captivated with Tetrahymena, a single-celled organism that inhabits ponds. “It’s hard to describe why this organism is so interesting,” he said. “But it’s so unlike most of the organisms on the planet that it just deserves its own field of study.”

Stover is working with the Tetrahymena Stock Center at Cornell University to gain public access to Tetrahymena data. The two forces applied for a $1.2 million National Institute of Health grant, which will be used, in part, to reestablish a Tetrahymena digital database that has been stagnant for a few years.

The revived database will include published articles, functions, a link to the genome map, and other information regarding each of Tetrahymena’s more than 27,000 genes. Tetrahymena is the first single-celled organism of its type to have its genome sequenced, meaning the number and order of all base sequences are known. Researchers look at the sequences because the order of bases is used to create cell proteins.

“When you look at a cell, it’s all basically proteins. They determine everything about the cell,” Stover said.

Researchers commonly study Tetrahymena because they are large and easy to work with compared to other single-celled organisms. Stover said they are also a fascinating study. Unlike every other organism, Tetrahymena chop their DNA into small pieces and then reassemble their DNA devoid of most junk DNA. This process illustrates concepts such as how mutations occur, how DNA is repaired, and how the ends of DNA are protected.

“Look at this cell if you want to see how a cell works. It does many extreme things,” Stover said.

Stover came to Bradley from Stanford University a few years ago. While there, a sequencing group from Maryland gave the group I was working with the entire Tetrahymena genome to post online. He helped create the database so anyone could research Tetrahymena gene functions.

Researchers might use this database if, for instance, they wanted to see if Tetrahymena created a way to adapt to pollution or viruses.

Stover plans to transport information from the Stanford database, which is no longer updated due to lack of funds, and post it on a database at Bradley.

Stover is working with Steven Dolins, associate professor of computer science and information systems, to generate the site. Students in Dolins’ senior capstone course have been developing Bradley’s database using the same software as Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is collaboratively written by volunteers. The tetrahymena database will also be a “wiki” that allows volunteers to contribute information.

“At the (Stanford) site, the only people who could change the information on the page were me and my coworker,” Stover said. “Now there is new information coming out on Tetrahymena. We need to allow the community to make those updates.” By allowing the public to update information, people can upload papers and other information on the site.

“If it were just me sitting around trying to come up with information on 27,000 genes, it would be difficult,” he said.

Stover said many smaller colleges work with Tetrahymena, and he plans to use the database with his students one day.

Stover is waiting for a reply from the National Institutes of Health about the grant. He said he hopes the team at Bradley will have the site up within a year.

Engineering Better Business Practices • Project Asia Update • Improving Doctor Training
Tetrahymena Gets its Own “Wiki” • STEM Scholars • BU Awards • Grant Activity

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