January, 2004, Volume 2, Issue 2

Jefferson Labs Bids Congratulations and Best Wishes to Eighteen!

On December 12, Jefferson Laboratories recognized eighteen employees for their outstanding service to the NCTR and Arkansas Regional Laboratory (ARL) with a reception honoring them on their retirement from government service. Dan Casciano, Ph.D., Director of the NCTR, and Khalil F. Kerdahi, Acting Director of the ARL, presented honorees with Distinguished Career Service Awards and Certificates of Appreciation.

Jefferson Laboratories Retirees. Photo/Virginia Taylor

FDA Distinguished Career Service

David T. Beranek, Ph.D (31 years)
Barbara J. Jewell (27 years)
John L. Reed (35 years)
Bruce W. Rice (40 years)
 

NCTR/ARL Distinguished Career Service
 

NCTR Receives Presidential Leadership Award

The NCTR and Entergy Arkansas recently received the 2003 Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management for reducing energy consumption and producing a ten-year net savings of over $1,000,000 in energy savings at the NCTR.

NCTR’s Division of Facilities Engineering (DFE) worked with the Division of Contracts and Procurement (DCP) to form a partnership with Entergy Arkansas to initiate projects under a utility energy service contract. Entergy Arkansas’ primary engineering firm, Tinsley-Mullen Engineers, Inc., identified mechanical, electrical, and water systems that needed to be modified for energy efficiency and developed a plan to achieve energy reductions. The projects included:

• Lighting retrofits to replace inefficient fluorescent and incandescent fixtures with efficient lighting systems, another award winning project.
   
• A comprehensive, highly efficient district cooling water system upgrade for the entire NCTR campus.
   
• Installation of capacitors to increase the efficiency of the NCTR’s electrical distribution system.

In addition, the team worked with NCTR to secure a natural gas procurement agreement that reduced costs by 21.5 percent, an effort which also received recognition from the Department of Health and Human Service.

Bioinformatics Conference

The newly-formed MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS) met in Little Rock, AR on November 13-15. The conference featured technical presentations, posters, panel discussions and a free National Center for Biotechnology Information workshop on GenBank® (the National Institutes of Health’s database of all publicly available DNA sequences) and molecular biology tools. Dr. David Mount, author of “Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis” was the keynote speaker. Dr. William Slikker, Director of the NCTR’s Division of Neurotoxicology, was elected President-Elect and Dr. Weida Tong, Director of the NCTR’s Center for Toxicoinformatics, was selected to serve on the Board of Directors.

Recent Publications

NCTR conducts research designed to protect the public’s health. Results from some of these research projects have recently been accepted for publication in nationally recognized scientific journals.

• Chiarelli, M.P., Differentiation of Isomeric C8-Substituted Alkylaniline Adducts of Guanine by Electrospray Ionization and Tandem Quadrupole Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry, Journal of American Society for Mass Spectrometry
   
• Costa, G., DNA Adduct Formation from Acrylamide via Conversion to Glycidamide in Adult and Neonatal Mice, Chemical Research in Toxicology
   
• Desai, V.G., Changes in Expression Level of Genes as a Function of Time of Day in the Liver of Rats, Mutation Research; Toxico Genomics, Special Issue
   
• Elkins, C., CbsT2 from Lactobacillus Johnsonii 100-100 is a Transport Protein of the Major Facilitator Superfamily that Facilitates Bile Acid Antipot, Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology
   
• Fang, H., Study of 202 Natural, Synthetic and Environmental Chemicals for Binding to the Androgen Receptor, Chemical Research and Toxicology
   
• Fu, P.P., Photoreaction, Phototoxicity, and Photocarcinogenicity of Retinoids, Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part C-Environmental Carcinogenesis & Ecotoxicology Reviews
   
• Fu, X., Effects of Dietary Soy and Estrous Cycle on Adrenal Cytochrome P450 1B1 Expression and DMBA Metabolism in Adrenal Glands and Livers in Female Sprague-Dawley Rats, Chem-Biol Interactions
   
• Heflich, R., In vivo Transgenic Mutation Assays, Mutation Research
   
• Hong, H., Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) Model for Prediction of Androgen Receptor Binding Affinity, SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research
   
• Itzhak, Y., Fenfluramine-induced Serotonergic Neurotoxicity in Mice: Lack of Neuroprotection by Inhibition/ablation of nNOS, Journal of Neurochemistry
   
• Kim, Y., A Kinetic Study on the Degradation of Erythromycin A in Aqueous Solution, International Journal of Pharmaceutics
   
• Kodell, R.L., Risk Assessment Implications of Mechanistic Model's Prediction of Low-Dose Nonlinearity of Liver Tumor Risk for Mice Fed Fumonisin B1, Nonlinearity in Biology, Toxicology and Medicine
   
• Moody, J.D., Degradation of Benzo[a]pyrene by Mycobacterium Vanbaalenii PYR-1, Applied and Environmental Microbiology
   
• Moore, M., Mouse Lymphoma Thymidine Kinase Gene Mutation Assay: International Workshop on Genotoxicity Tests Workgroup Report - Plymouth, UK 2002, Mutation Research
   
• Ning, B., Human Glutathione S-transferase A2 (hGSTA2) Polymorphisms: Variant Expression, Distribution in Prostate Cancer Cases/Controls and a Novel Form, Pharmacogenetics
   
• Pogge, A., Neuroimaging as a New Approach to Neurotoxicology, NeuroToxicology
   
• Scallet, A.C., Electroencephalographic, Behavioral, and c-fos Responses to Acute Domoic Acid Exposure, Neurotoxicology and Teratology
   
• Shi, L., Microarrays: Technologies and Applications, Applied Mycology and Biotechnology, Vol. 3: Fungal Genomics
   
• Shi, L., Biocheminoformatics: Integrating Bioinformatics and Chemoinformatics for Drug Discovery and Development, European Biopharmaceutical Review
   
• Slikker, W., Neuroimaging: Strategies to Illuminate Environment-disease Linkages: Focusing Unique Needs, Tools, Challenges and Strategies for Neurotoxicologists, NeuroToxicology
   
• Sung, K., A Simple and Efficient Triton X-100 Boiling and Chloroform Extraction Method of RNA Isolation from Gram-positive and Gram-negative Bacteria, FEMS Microbiology Letters
   
• Tong, W., ArrayTrack - Supporting Toxicogenomic Research at the FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), Environmental Health Perspectives - Toxicogenomics

Online Research Information

Regulatory Research Perspectives: Impact on Public Health, an on-line journal that provides a vehicle for FDA scientists to communicate important scientific information, and NCTR’s FY 2002-2003 Research Accomplishments and Plans are available from NCTR’s web site at http://www.fda.gov/nctr/science/science.htm.

Contact Information

The NCTR Quarter Page is published four times a year by the Division of Planning at the National Center for Toxicological Research. For more information about NCTR contact Dr. Dan Casciano, NCTR Director, at dcasciano@nctr.fda.gov or [870] 543-7517.