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Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten and her team of Hamilton students spent 10 days this summer at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla., to study piscidin, antimicrobial peptides from fish. The team, comprised of Caitlin Burzynski ’12, Nina Kraus '13, Cotten, and Alex Dao ’12, used several state-of-the-art Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instruments to obtain atomic-level information on samples of piscidin bound to lipid bilayers that mimic bacterial membranes.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten recently participated in a Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) annual business meeting that gathered councilors from diverse academic disciplines at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Cotten contributed to two workshops as part of the national meeting that followed the business meeting.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten served on a panel at the 2010 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Conference in Anaheim, Calif. in April. The panel was part of a session titled “The Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Career Spectrum.”

Professor of Chemistry Tim Elgren and Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten participated in a Council on Undergraduate Research annual business meeting from June 18-20, that gathered councilors from diverse academic disciplines at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Jason McGavin '12 and Matthew Baxter '11 understand that a peptide's structure can say a lot about how it functions in the body. This summer, they are studying two versions of the peptide Piscidin – Piscidin 1 and Piscidin 3. They will work alongside Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten, whose previous work in this field has illustrated that there is a distinct difference between them. 

Obesity in the United States has become a major concern for obvious reasons. Courtney Carroll '11 is working this summer with Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten to find out whether Neuropeptide Y has a direct effect on food intake and decreased physical activity. The amount of Neuropeptide Y lurking in the microscopic corners of a person's cells may have an impact on his or her diet.