M. O. Martin Collaborators

Past and Present University of Puget Sound Students

Current Colonizers of the UPS Microbial Menagerie!	This section contains the current women and men who work in my small undergraduate laboratory. We work hard, but we also try to have fun! Click here for some of our recent Microbial Hijinks™! In any event, please meet this current crop of great students!
	*Jay "Gadget" Colingham ('08)* Jay is the ever-stylish "fashion plate" of the Microbial Menagerie, having spent waaaay too much time at Nordstrom over the years. This senior dreams of having both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports installed at the base of his skull---truly, Jay is a man who dreams and lives the Computer Age! After graduation, he hopes to enter the medical profession. Jay's current project involves time-motion analysis of how the predator Ensifer adhaerens "pursues" prey cells.
	Bethany "Sunshine" Stackhouse ('08) Bethany has a sense of humor so dark it is ultraviolet, and from time to time enters into "cleaning frenzies" in lab. A senior, Bethany hopes to pursue a PhD after graduation and follow the Microbial Tao she has been taught here. Bethany's senior thesis will examine the expression and regulation of the aspartase gene of Bdellovibrio. Bethany has also studied interactions between Bdellovibrio and different species of prey organisms in mixed biofilms.
	Jillian "Darth Malice" Waters ('08) Jill definitely has plenty of Prokaryotic Pride, and a strange interest in microbes of the lower GI tract---as well as pathogens and even parasites. She hopes to enter a strong PhD program in microbiology, and spread her Rainbow of Prokaryotic Pride everywhere. At the same time, her dark sense of humor has earned Jill a coveted Dark Lord of the Midichlorian Sith name around the lab! As a senior, Jill is following up on adenylate cycle gene structure and regulation in Bdellovibrio as her senior project.
UPS Macrobiota who have Dispersed to Remote Sites!	And here we have former Denizens of the Microbial Menagerie who have "moved on" after graduation. I'm very proud of each of them, and feel lucky that they chose to spend some time in my classes and laboratory. I'll do my best to keep this section current with their latest adventures!
	*Ashley "A-Bomb" Bettencourt ('07)* Ashley Bettencourt graduated in 2007, and currently works in a medical microbiology laboratory in Davis, California. She is planning to apply to medical school in the next year or two. Ashley has an abiding love for hip-hop music and dislikes breakfast to this day. While she was in the Menagerie, Ashley studied expression of the groEL gene during the lifecycle of Bdellovibrio as part of her senior thesis.
	*Andrew "A-Train" Collins ('07)* Andrew Collins graduated in 2007, and is currently in a Ph.D. program at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. For mysterious reasons, Andrew has been known to refer to himself as "Big Red" (we don't ask). While he was in the Menagerie, Andrew studied the aspartase gene of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus as part of his senior thesis.
	Leah "Darth Havoc" Rommereim ('07) Leah Rommereim graduated in 2007, and is currently enrolled in a PhD program in Microbiology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Leah's sardonic sense of humor earned her the first Dark Lord of the Midichlorian Sith award here in the Microbial Menagerie. While in the laboratory, Leah did some preliminary studies into carbohydrate metabolism in Bdellovibrio.