Undergraduates clean up at the departmental Excellence Award Ceremony

Tonight, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry held our 21st annual ceremony to recognize the excellent students we have in the students. Heisler lab students brought home multiple different recognitions, including:

Trista Newman – Academic Award for Seniors, Departmental Service Award, Recognition as a STEM Scholar, Recognition as a Goldwater Scholar, and Recognition as a Crable Scholar.

Mia Seyfarth – Academic Award for Sophomores, Departmental Service Award, and Recognition as a STEM Scholar.

Nathan Philps – Academic Award for Sophomores and Recognition as a STEM Scholar.

Trista wins a SoSE URSS Poster Award

Congratulations are in order for Trista as her poster presentation at last weeks Duquesne URSS as selected as one the top 10 in the School of Science Engineering! That is two years in a row (Ryan in ’25) that a Heisler lab member has been selected!

Trista Successfully Defended her Senior Honors Thesis!

Today, after much work, a lot of successes and many failed experiments, Trista successfully defended her Senior Honors Thesis in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry! In her time in lab, she has been awarded numerous scholarships, awards, and is a co-author on one manuscript that was recently published. The thesis defense is a testament to the hard work and dedication that Trista has shown over the last 2.5 years and the lab could not be happier for her and all her successes!

Successful Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium for Trista and Mia!

Today, Trista and Mia had the opportunity to present their research at Duquesne’s Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium (URSS) that is open all undergraduates conducting any form of research! Both of them spent most of the time talking with faculty, students, and guests to explain their work on DNA methylation genes and antibiotic development. Very proud of both of them!

SHMT1 Paper Published!

Today, our paper was accepted at ACS Omega that highlights the collaborative work between our lab (Morgan and Zoe) and the Mihailescu Lab (Rosa, Manju, and Sophia) that highlights the importance of a structure in the 5′-untranslated region of the SHMT1 gene in controlling the proteins expression level. Link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.5c13146

Our cover submission was also selected as a Supplementary Journal Cover!

Elias and Morgan present tomorrow at Duquesne’s GRS!

Earlier this month, the abstracts submitted by Elias and Morgan were selected for ORAL and poster presentations at Duquesne’s Graduate Research Symposium (GRS).

Elias will highlight his recent results highlighting compounds we found, in collaboration with Paul Lummis (Duquesne) that selectively kill Gram-positive bacteria, including the causative agent of MRSA infections. 

Morgan will provide an overview of her work linking a Listeria protein to its role in subverting a cell’s immune response to infection.

Welcome CJ, Ella, and Nathan!

New year, new semester, new students. Today, the lab grew by adding three new students for the coming semester. Today we added CJ Booterbaugh (Jr, PSYC), Ella Jacoby (Fr, Biochem) and Nathan Philips (Soph, Biochem). We are excited to see what they can accomplish on existing and new projects in the lab!

FIRST HEISLER LAB PUBLICATION!

Today, our efforts, in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Montgomery (Duquesne) was published in ACS Organic & Inorganic Au (DOI: 10.1021/acsorginorgau.5c00098). The Montgomery group was interested in a novel synthetic pathway for producing 1,2,4-Triazolidines with multiple different substitutions.

Given the involvement of triazolidines in diverse bioactivities, we found that many of these compound possess antibacterial properties. Led undergraduate Trista Newman, this project has spurred new questions and avenues of research lead by PhD student Elias Griffin.

First Preprint goes live!

Today, the first preprint that the Heisler lab has had the honor contribute their expertise towards has gone live. A collaboration with Rita Mihailescu’s lab here at Duquesne shows the importance of DNA secondary structures in the regulation of the 5′ untranslated region (5’UTR) of a gene implicated in multiple sclerosis. Morgan (PhD student) and Zoe (NSF-REU and NIH-NURE student) contributed all of the molecular and cell biology in the paper!

 

DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.24.690261

Undergraduates Awarded Multiple Awards for ABASM!

Today, undergraduates Megan Lyons, Elizabeth Stahovich (Cascio Lab), Trista Newman, and Cate Chalovich all presented at the Allegheny Branch of the American Society for Microbiology Regional Conference in California, PA.

Elizabeth presented a poster on her summer research experience at at the University of Bern in Switzerland with a project that focused on neurolisteriosis, an infection of the central nervous system caused by the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.

Megan presented a poster on her summer research experience at Penn State in Dr. Dudley’s on project that focused on Sequencing of the O-Antigen Region in E. coli using CRISPR Cleavage assays.

Cate presented, and was awarded with a Top Undergraduate Poster Presentation Award (and cash), a poster on her continued efforts to make knock out strains of Listeria to advance projects uncovering the interactions with host proteins.

Trista, whose abstract was selected for an oral presentation, was awarded with the Top Undergraduate Oral Presentation Award (and cash), for her efforts in identifying novel antibiotic scaffolds that target common foodborne-pathogens!

Congrats to everyone!

Dissertation Outline DEFENDED by Elias

As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Elias successfully defended his plans for identifying potential scaffold to control the ever growing number of antibiotic-resistance pathogens as well as identifying the target and mechanism of an effector protein that Dr. Heisler has been interested in since 2017.

Morgan Successfully Defends her Dissertation Outline

As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Morgan successfully demonstrated how she plans to tackle an ongoing problem in Listeria biology for explaining how our cells sometimes cannot protect themselves from a Listeria infection, and how the bacteria uses its virulence factors to successfully do this.

 

Congrats Morgan!

Trista presents that the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rice University!

As part of Trista’s Goldwater Scholarship, Trista had the opportunity to present the work she has been doing in the lab over the past 14 months in an oral presentation. Additionally, she was awarded full financial support to travel to, attend, and network at the conference with other Goldwater fellows and scientists from the greater southeast Texas area. 
Feedback from those at her presentation were “extremely positive, and your average ranking was “excellent”… for your overall impression (good logical flow with all the expected sections of the talk being present) and your introduction.” Her use of Ryan Gugliotti’s introduction slides also impressed many of the reviewers.

 

Winters Foundation Grant Supported!

Today, we received that our proposal for investigating mechanisms of Pathogenic hijacking of plasma membrane cholesterol has been selected by the Samuel and Emma Winters Foundation for funding! Builing on the work Dr. Heisler did in his postdoctoral studies with Neal Alto and Arun Radhakrishnan, this project is hopes to uncover novel mechanisms bacteria use to control host cholesterol levels and the implication of those on host-pathogen interactions.