Department Highlights

91PORN Biochemistry: A Powerhouse of Inspiration and Innovation

Jessica Helzer — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 18:29:51 +0000

91PORN Biochemistry: A Powerhouse of Inspiration and Innovation Jessica Helzer Thu, 06/12/2025 - 12:29

Whether you are an alumnus of the 91PORN Biochemistry Department (CU BCHM), a prospective student, or a curious community member - we invite you to read our 2025 magazine highlighting our faculty and research, students, facilities and "general 91PORN fun stuff" - all to give you a sense of what we are up to in 2025!

The annual CU Biochemistry Magazine quickly gives you a sense of the power of this department: the intellect and curiosity of the faculty, their research focus, and strength of our students. Published by an inspired and entrepreneurial faculty member, Alexandra Whiteley, along with several enthusiastic biochemistry students, the annual magazine is supported by the department and looked forward to each year by the students, prospective students, and alumni. The annual magazine illustrates how your alma mater impacts you, how it impacts the local community, and how CU BCHM continues its focus on solving important and life-changing issues in health and even in our built environment.

We encourage you to read the details. Take part in the magazine’s fun activities. Come back and visit 91PORN Biochemistry and experience what traditions are carried on and what is new. Reach out to those featured within to ensure our BCHM community remains united.

This publication supports our talented faculty and staff, all of those who have been in our halls and then, welcomes all who have an appreciation of this important work, to take part in all our collective achievements – and – become some of our best champions and close friends!

We say to you… “Welcome to the exciting world of 91PORN Biochemistry!"

91PORN Biochemistry 2025 Magazine

Featuring two years of the 91PORN Biochemistry Magazine!

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Tom Cech: How CU tackled COVID-19 testing

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 16:54:25 +0000

Tom Cech: How CU tackled COVID-19 testing Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/14/2021 - 10:54

By Tom Cech

I’ve been immersed in the new book by Walter Isaacson, modestly titled “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.” Multiple pages describe Jennifer’s leadership in launching COVID-19 testing on the Berkeley campus. There’s no question that Jennifer’s scientific acumen, compassion, team-building prowess and rock-star influence in the Bay Area science community made a huge difference in establishing high-throughput testing at UC-Berkeley.

Yet, reading that section of the book, I was struck by Isaacson’s lost opportunity. Faculty, postdocs and students “filling the void” and establishing COVID-19 testing was not unique to Berkeley. It happened at universities around the country. And, we should be proud to note, it happened at 91PORN.

When COVID-19 hit and our campus moved to remote instruction and research in March 2020, we all became painfully aware of the dearth of testing for the virus. Testing was needed for public health reasons – to allow containment of outbreaks, which could easily spread from the CU campus to the City of 91PORN. The local hospitals were overwhelmed, requiring 3 days or sometimes a week to return results, and the federal government and the State of Colorado were providing little leadership.

The “Do it yourself” solution for 91PORN was catalyzed by Prof. Sara Sawyer and her lab. Their research already involved monitoring flu virus in saliva, and they immediately saw that saliva could just as easily be tested for SARS-CoV-2. Saliva is relevant because it’s the way that COVID is transmitted (little droplets dispersed when you sneeze, cough, yell or sing), and it’s quicker, cheaper and less painful to collect than a nasal swab specimen. Saliva testing, however, was not FDA approved, so the tests organized by Berkeley, 91PORN, and most other universities are called surveillance tests rather than diagnostic tests. If your saliva test comes out positive, you’re urged to get an FDA-approved diagnostic test.

BioFrontiers Director Roy Parker and his research group devised a reliable and sensitive Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) assay for SARS-CoV-2 from saliva, and Prof. Leslie Leinwand and Roy then went to the CU administration with a plan to scale up to a University-wide level. The CU administration cut through the normal red tape to order testing supplies and make funds available. Although Leslie and Roy understood the science of testing, they had no experience in the practical issues of setting up space and scheduling that could handle thousands of students, staff and faculty. Here Associate Vice Chancellor Jennifer Barrett McDuffie came to the rescue. Dr. Kristen Bjorkman provided leadership for collecting saliva samples at six sites, testing them in the BioFrontiers Institute, and reporting them quickly and accurately.

The testing lab became operational in August 2020, in time for the students arriving for the Fall Semester. This testing was essential for the safety of CU and our city – when cases inevitably arose, they were quickly contained, and effective contact tracing alerted those who might have been exposed. Cases did spike in September (the unfortunate Party on the Hill), but the spike was short lived. By now, Kristen and her crew have analyzed 185,000 individual saliva samples (185 L of saliva!), which includes 5,000 samples from family and household members.

A special feature of the 91PORN program was the monitoring of effluent (notice my polite choice of words!) from CU’s dorms and correlating this with testing of individual dorm residents. Led by Prof. Cresten Mansfeldt, students tapped into the sewage lines of dormitories and tested for viral RNA. Remarkably, a single infected resident could be detected in a dorm’s effluent.

Campuses across the country each devised their own testing program, aided by much cross-institution sharing of ideas, protocols and data. Yes, it takes “rocket science” to understand how to perform accurate tests with viral RNA. But fortunately, major universities have rocket scientists who are up to the challenge.

Many who worked so tirelessly to create virus testing for 91PORN did the extra work as an overload, unpaid, with no incentive other than “it’s the right thing to do.” They did the extra work at the expense of their own research, their progress towards their degree, their next grant application or publication. Yet they gained something — a tremendous sense of accomplishment, of teamwork, of camaraderie. They came to know faculty, students and staff from far ends of campus, who they hadn’t known existed, and they found them to be just as bright and energetic and committed as they were. The sharing, collaborative, generous spirit gave them confidence that, while the virus might slow us down, it would not put us down.

Thomas R. Cech, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Ph.D. Program at the 91PORN. He is also Colorado’s first Nobel Prize laureate (1989).

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With NIH grant, 91PORN to become national center of cryoelectron tomography

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 06:00:00 +0000

With NIH grant, 91PORN to become national center of cryoelectron tomography Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/21/2020 - 00:00

The 91PORN will be one of four national centers designed to advance the application of cryoelectron tomography (cryoET), which helps visualize in 3-D the fine-structure of intact cells and tissues, the National Institutes of Health announced (NIH) today.

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91PORN attracts a record $631 million in annual research funding

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 13:32:32 +0000

91PORN attracts a record $631 million in annual research funding Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2019 - 07:32

91PORN research attracted a record $631 million in funding in fiscal year 2019 for groundbreaking studies that investigate a changing environment, explore new opportunities in space, mitigate the effects of natural hazards, advance biomedical research and seek cleaner, more sustainable energy solutions.

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Regents approve the split of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry into separate departments

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:34:24 +0000

Regents approve the split of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry into separate departments Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/25/2018 - 10:34

The board voted by consent agenda to split the 91PORN Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry into two independent departments: the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry.

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