2012

• We recently published our work on the novel antiviral compound BG-323 in the Journal of Virology. It seems to have generated quite a bit of buzz (see media page). We’re pretty excited about where this project is taking us!
• Congratulations to Andrew Gardner on earning his BS in Biochemistry! We wish you the best in your quest to attend PA school.
• Dan April is moving on to attend Medical School at Tulane this fall. Hopefully he will send some beignets and chickory coffee our way. Good luck in the Big Easy, and stay off of Bourbon Street!
• The Geiss lab has two new editions! Jaxen and Brycen Steel were born May 23, 2012. Big sister Eliza seemed none too pleased at first, but will probably have them twisted around her little finger in no time. Congrats Jordan and Natalie!
• Bejan has accepted a position down at the Ancheutz Health Sciences Center. Best of luck in your new position, and if you ever have a desire to purify protein you know where we are! It was great to have you in the lab for the last 3 years, and we’re sure you’ll do great with your new lab.

2010-2011

• We got our paper on flavivirus capping enzyme RNA binding accepted at PLoS One! This was the culmination of several years of work, and represents the first detailed description of how the capping enzyme binds this substrate.
• Bejan was awarded Highest Honors for his poster presentation “Development of an Assay to Analyze the Activity of Flavivirus NS5 Guanylytransferase” at the 2010 CURC. Great work!
• Congratulations to Brittney for being accepted to Physician Assistant School at the University of Colorado! We’ll miss you when you move all the way to Denver, but we’re really happy that your hard work has paid off.
• Siddhi and Bejan were featured in a video about the undergraduate research activities here in MIP. They both did a great job and are great spokespersons for the undergraduate research opportunities here in the department and at CSU. This is when we decided that Bejan should be kept away from the cell culture room…
• A big “Thanks!” to Jordan, Brittney, and Bejan for helping with the hand-washing experiment at Lopez Elementary! The kids loved it and are looking forward to the next experiments.
• The first paper in our new lab has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Biomolecular Screening (A High-Throughput Screening Assay for the Identification of Flavivirus NS5 Capping Enzyme GTP-Binding Inhibitors: Implications for Antiviral Drug Development)! This will undoubtedly be the first of many great papers. Great job, folks!