Institutional Awards
Schlegel Deibler Charitable Foundation. $15,000. (Malinda Triller-Doran, Archives & Special Collections) “LGBT Center of Central PA History Project”
Faculty Awards
National Park Service (NPS) Slave Stampedes: The Underground Railroad on the Missouri Borderlands Project (Part B) $111,838.23 (Matthew Pinsker, History). Dickinson College will identify up three to four historic sites, structures or historic landscapes associated "slave stampedes" in Missouri for potential inclusion in the National Historic Register of Landmarks and the NPS Network to Freedom. Pinsker and his team will identify potential candidate sites and then consult with NPS staff and current project Editorial Board to prepare a short list of application packets. Matthew Pinsker, principal investigator, and his Dickinson team will then conduct extensive field and digital research and will hire special consultants as needed, in preservation, archaeology, and historic landscape, to help document claims for historical significance. Dickinson will prepare the final three to four nominations in consultation with NPS staff by September 2022.
National Science Foundation. $299,966. (John Henson, Biology) “COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: Building the Contractile Ring in the Early Embryo” Cytokinesis is the final event of the cell cycle whereby the cell physically partitions into two daughter cells. Over forty years of morphological, biochemical, genetic and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatio-temporal regulation of the actomyosin contractile ring facilitates cytokinesis. However, despite this large research effort, significant questions remain regarding precisely how the contractile ring is assembled and organized in animal cells. Recently published work by the investigators demonstrated that in early embryonic cells, the mature contractile ring is comprised of a highly organized array of aligned, concatenated myosin II and actin filaments. Moreover, during the earliest phases of cytokinesis myosin II, septin and anillin are organized into discreet foci that appear to transform into intermediate “patches” that presumably assemble into the fully formed ring. These nodes are reminiscent of the pre-ring nodes of cytokinetic proteins in fission yeast, and are the first evidence that a similar process may be employed in an animal cell. The current proposal will apply a combination of live cell imaging, high-resolution light and electron microscopy, and agent-based computer modeling to test the hypothesis that in the sea urchin embryo the contractile ring assembles from precursor nodes that undergo congression and transformation into a mature ring. The proposed studies will be performed in early echinoderm and mollusk embryos, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent system for both experimental and theoretical approaches. (Collaborating institution: New Mexico State University)
Student Awards
