Cellular, Molecular and Developmental Biology.

The Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology Division had 21 platform presentations and 12 poster presentations this year at the Biloxi meeting of the Mississippi Academy of Sciences. Although the number of presenters was slightly decreased from last year's meeting in Tupelo, the overall participation appeared to have increased with approximately 30 in attendance at each of the three sessions. Representative subjects of research presented this year included: gene suppression in Aspergillus nidulans, physical properties of the amphipathic protein hydrophobin, heavy metals in hyperthermophilic archaea, heatshock response in wound healing, regulation of the cell signaling protein Janus kinase, and DNA binding proteins in chloroplast nucleoids. We hosted two invited speakers at our Thursday morning session this year. The first was Ross E. Whitwam (Mississippi University for Women) who presented work he performed at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on "Cloning and Characterizing the Calicheamicin Self-resi stance gene in Micromonospora echinospora." The second was Alexander Grant Clark, (St. Andrew's Episcopal School, Jackson) who presented his Mississippi Junior Academy of Sciences award winning work: "Dependence on Cutoff Distance in Protein Fold Recognition Scoring Functions."

Awards were presented for two student presentations. Wally Bugg won Outstanding Undergraduate Presentation award for his work on the "Isolation of a Catalytic RNA Capable of Coenzyme Synthesis" conducted under the direction of Faqing Huang (University of Southern Mississippi.) In addition to the certificate, Mr. Bugg received a $50 cash award generously provided by Susie Emfinger of Fisher Scientific. Stephanie A. Misquitta won the Outstanding Graduate Presentation award for her work on the "Essential Residues in Glutaminyl Cyclase" she performed under the direction of Robert Bateman (University of Southern Mississippi.) Her certificate was also accompanied by a $50 cash award provided by Rebecca Turnage of [C.sup.2]Corporation.

During the Divisional Business Meeting, Vice-chair Peter Butko (University of Southern Mississippi) was elected to Chair the Division for the 2001 Annual Meeting next spring. Roy J. Duhe (University of Mississippi Medical Center) was elected to the vice-chair position.