Janelle Leuthaeuser is on the cutting edge of biophysics. A molecular genetics and genomics Ph.D. student, she is part of a nationwide effort to create a more efficient generation of protein-based drugs.

Proteins are the worker bees of cells. They get rid of waste, transmit cellular signals and carry out the chemical reactions that keep our bodies running. The biomolecules’ role as intracellular regulators and their sheer number (there are about 7,000 different types of protein molecules in a typical human body cell) also make them one of the most frequent targets of drugs.

Drugs can help your body fight off disease and infection by speeding up or altering the chemical reactions regulated by proteins. Around half of the drugs currently on the market work by targeting proteins.

Researchers have identified millions of proteins and are discovering new ones faster than ever before. The problem, when it comes to making new and better drugs, is that two proteins can have a similar structure or genetic sequence but react very differently to the same chemical compound. This can lead to adverse drug side effects that range from mildly discomforting to potentially life-threatening. In fact, more than three million serious adverse reactions to prescription drugs occur every year. There are more than 100,000 deaths from these reactions per year, placing prescription drug use as the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, ahead of pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS and pneumonia.

“The more information we can get about how specific proteins function the better we can target them with drugs,” Leuthaeuser said. “We have the technology to identify a lot of new proteins now, but not to efficiently identify the details of their molecular function.”

She is working with Jacquelyn Fetrow, Reynolds Professor of Computational Biophysics and Dean of the College, and a national team of researchers to develop an automated program that classifies different proteins by their active site, the location where chemical reactions occur. Contemporary technologies predict protein function based on the full sequence or structure of protein molecules. The Wake Forest led team found this method often vaguely or incorrectly classifies proteins. Leuthaeuser said that proteins can be grouped together by function more accurately when using the sequence and structure directly surrounding the active site rather than the overall structure of a protein molecule.

“When proteins have less than 30-40 percent sequence identity, it is more helpful to look at just the active sites,” Leuthaeuser said. “We can more accurately predict their function when we are looking at this small area.”

A simple example of how the active site information can be applied in developing more efficient drugs is with aspirin. Leuthaeuser said aspirin affects two similar proteins – COX 1 and COX 2 – that do two very different things. COX 2 is involved with general pain and inflammation while COX 1 regulates swelling in the gastrointestinal tract. Aspirin inhibits both COX 1 and COX 2.

“This is why taking aspirin can give you an upset stomach,” Leuthaeuser said. “We would like to inhibit just COX 2 and not COX 1. “There are differences in the active sites of COX 1 and COX 2 that allow drugs to be targeted to COX 2 selectively, decreasing the potential gastrointestinal side effects.”

Leuthaeuser is in the process of characterizing active site information for a group of structurally diverse proteins using a computer program developed by members of the Fetrow Lab. While the project is in an early testing and validation stage, she said the eventual hope is that utilizing active site profiling technology will enable accurate and efficient protein function prediction. This could in turn assist pharmaceutical researchers in designing drugs with fewer adverse effects.

Patsy Babbitt, a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, has been working with Fetrow on models to predict protein function for five years and is a collaborator on the project. She said automated systems like this will not only make it easier to develop drugs with fewer side effects but will greatly speed up the process of drug development in general. Until recently, Babbitt said the only way to efficiently and accurately identify protein function at the necessary level of molecular detail was to examine them one by one in the lab, a painstakingly slow process that requires a significant amount of time for each protein and costs a significant amount of money.

She said the goal is to bring the time down from a few years to a few weeks.

“The precision will not be as good as individual experiments,” Babbitt, said. “But, it will take much less time and money to build an infrastructure to help other scientists form hypotheses and identify the details of protein functional sites.”

On the heels of one the worst U.S. droughts in more than half a century, a new study conducted by Wake Forest biologists raises questions about the future of one of the most integral members of stream ecosystems throughout the Southeast – the salamander.

Five years of research, which now appears in the scientific journal Herpetologica, shows how salamanders and other aquatic animals might react to drought, shedding light on the impact of climate change and urbanization on salamander populations.

“Unfortunately, the heat is on for the amiable amphibian,” said Robert Browne, a biology professor who oversaw the research, which was conducted with collaborators from Davidson College.

Steven Price, a graduate student in Browne’s lab, studied the Northern Dusky Salamander at 17 sites in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C., area from 2005 to 2009, which included 12 months of exceptional drought (Sept. 2007 to Sept. 2008).

While adult salamanders had 90 percent survival rates from one month to the next, their larvae, which must be submerged in water for development and metamorphosis, disappeared from an average 30 percent of sites during the drought year. When water levels in the areas observed reached a 110-year low, adult salamanders migrated from streambeds to underground or high-humidity refuges at twice the rate seen during non-drought conditions.

“With climate change models predicting that droughts will become longer in duration and more severe, having knowledge of animals’ response strategies to extremely dry conditions is critical to their future survival,” said Price, who now is an assistant professor of stream and riparian ecology at the University of Kentucky.

“During the drought, adult salamanders demonstrated a 90 percent survival rate from one month to the next. It sounds pretty high, but at this rate, less than one percent would survive a four-year drought suggested under certain climate change scenarios,” Price warned.

Salamanders play an important role in maintaining balance in a forest ecosystem. They feast on stream invertebrates that help regulate the nutrients derived from leaf litter in waterways. As prey for birds and mammals, their place in the food chain remains an important one.

Browne said man-made solutions such as wider riparian zones – the biologically distinctive land that borders waterways such as rivers, creeks and streams – could help protect salamander species long-term.

“The Charlotte metro area expanded like crazy during the time of our research, and development, like drought, has a major impact on the fragmentation of habitats,” said Browne. “Protecting and widening the riparian buffer zones would not only provide them shelter during dry conditions, it would also prevent erosion and absorb silt, which negatively impacts the survival of stream-dwelling animals.”

Thus, drought may interact with local land-uses resulting in a particularly bleak outlook for salamanders and other semi-aquatic organisms.

Refugees, ballad singers, classic car collectors and victims of forced sterilization —Wake Forest third-year documentary film students have spent the last year working on movies that show what life is like from these different perspectives.

“In telling stories, our students reach out into the community, touch on sensitive and emotional topics, and connect with people who have had compelling life experiences,” says Mary Dalton (’83), communication professor and co-director of Wake Forest’s Documentary Film Program (DFP). “The students bring their subjects’ struggles and joys to their films so viewers can learn more about others as well as themselves.”

Students work in teams to produce their movies, and each group of students receives the same amount of startup money to fund their project. Part of the learning experience includes raising additional funds for film production, which might include money from private donations, KickStarter, or organizations who support the film’s message.

Five years ago, editing a feature film with special equipment and trained technicians would have cost $200,000 or more. With today’s technology, shorter is the norm, and the challenge for film students is in knowing what to keep and what to cut. “Young people are savants when it comes to visual literacy. With YouTube, smart phones, tablets and quality video cameras, they know how to use the technology. It’s fine-tuned technique and exceptional storytelling skills that separate the amateur from the professional,” says communication professor Peter Gilbert.

Listed below are a selection of films produced in 2011-12.

“Wagonmasters”
Screening Sat., Sept 15, at Krankies Coffee Shop
“Our film explores America’s love affair with the station wagon,” says Chris Zaluski who teamed up with Sam Smartt for their thesis production. The movie mixes archival pop culture with modern footage as a way to show where our society was and where it is today. “We like to say that the film is similar to the experience one has when riding in the ‘way back’ of a wagon — that is, looking backwards while moving forward. Taking on this project certainly opened both of our eyes to the classic car world, and to the fun and hospitable people who are collectors — especially the small yet passionate wagon subset. “

“Over Home: Love Songs from Madison County”
Screening Tues., Oct. 2, at The Barn
Kim Dryden grew up listening to Irish music. When she came to North Carolina, she felt the connection between Appalachian ballad music and the Irish music she grew up with and “fell in love.” In making this film on the heritage of ballad singing, Dryden and her film partner Joe Cornelius developed a deep appreciation for Americana. “The songs in our film are beautiful, important and worth knowing and spreading because they tell universal stories. There’s a lot of history about local and regional events bound up in the lyrics,” said Dryden.

“The One Who Builds”
Screening Fri., Oct. 5, at UNC-Greensboro
Nearly 8,000 of Greensboro’s residents are refugees. Surprised? Peter Carolla, Nick Gooler and Hillary Pierce were when they teamed up to tell the story of Omer Omer, a professor at the Bryan School of Business at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, who is committed to helping resettle refugees in his hometown through the African Services Coalition. “People are surprised to find out how many of their neighbors are refugees,” says Gooler. “Even in a small town there can be thousands of people who have come to the U.S. looking for a better life.” The filmmakers hope their work will build bridges in the Greensboro community and beyond. “People focus too much on what divides us rather than what unites us,” says Carolla.

“The Wicked Silence”
Screening Fri., Nov. 2, at WFU Biotech Place Auditorium
“When we first began pre-production on Wicked Silence, we were focused on the history and the bioethics of the North Carolina Eugenics program and the government policies that created the it. After months of focusing on this side of the story, we found that the real story was the victims and their experiences,” says Jess Pic who teamed up with Sana Haq on this film. “We hope our audience connects with the victims.” Pic says. “The people in the film could be members of our own family. Each is kind, loving and courageous. We see that they are deserving of a family, and we see the atrocity of denying them that basic human right. Debate over reproductive rights continues today, and we hope to encourage people to think critically about these issues.”

For four years, Wake Forest graduate student Aaron Corcoran has studied how tiger moths use sonar-jamming to evade bats in the Arizona desert.

With Corcoran’s help, the evolutionary arms race between bat and moth has been captured on camera for the new National Geographic Television mini-series, “Untamed Americas.”  The program originally aired June 10 and will be shown again at 9 p.m. (EDT) Saturday, June 16, on the National Geographic Channel. According  to the website, the series narrated by Josh Brolin “explores the greatest wildlife spectacles and against-the-odds fights for survival” in the Americas.

Corcoran was asked to be a scientific consultant for the “Desert” segment of the series because of his extensive field research.

“I was basically the bat whisperer,” he said.

Filming the interactions between the big brown bats and the tiger moths had to take place during one week in late July because that is when the moths are active. “Right after the monsoons in Arizona, the moths emerge as adults,” Corcoran said. “They have such a narrow window to breed.”

It took 80 hours of shooting time to get the minute or two of footage showing the moths avoiding being eaten by jamming the bats’ radar. He was there every minute.

Corcoran studies how the tiger moth uses high-speed, high-frequency clicks to disrupt the bat’s echolocation cycle. He is a doctoral student working with Wake Forest Professor of Biology William Conner.

“Sonar jamming illustrates a new level of escalation in a 50-million-year-old arms race between bats and insects,” Corcoran said. His research has been published in Science and featured by several national media outlets, including The New York Times and National Public Radio.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded physics graduate student Katelyn Goetz (’11) one of its prestigious summer travel fellowships.

Originally from West Des Moines, Iowa, Goetz studies organic semiconductors and plastic-based flexible electronics in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials with assistant professor of physics Oana Jurchescu. The NSF fellowship will enable her to grow crystals using new materials and methods in the lab of research collaborator Christian Kloc at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“Because of Dr. Kloc’s expertise in the field of organic electronics, I am most looking forward to being a part of his lab group for a few months,” said Goetz. “I also am looking forward to experiencing a new culture. In the past few weeks several people have told me they’ve lived or worked in Singapore before, and all of their experiences make me very excited.”

Her growing to do list includes trying new foods at the hawker stands, going to see the country’s signature Merlion statue, and traveling around Southeast Asia.

Jurchescu, who has mentored Goetz in both her undergraduate and graduate studies, recently told Wake Forest Magazine, “There’s no greater reward than to see them growing from curious students into independent researchers.”

Read more about the close mentoring relationship between Jurchescu and Goetz in Wake Forest Magazine.

Starting at age seven, Wake Forest junior Jawad Wahabzada spent four years working eight hours a day as a child laborer in Afghanistan making Persian rugs in a factory. Though he now lives 7,000 miles from his birth country, his heart is not far from the children of Kabul.

“There are 60,000 school-age children working in Kabul,” says Wahabzada, who is a communication major. “They are forced to work because of war and economic difficulties. They need help.”

Wahabzada wanted to tell the story of these children to raise awareness of the tragedy. “In the news, we hear about Al-Qaeda. We hear about the Taliban. We hear about the international forces,” he says. “We never hear about the real people of Afghanistan, as if they are insignificant and don’t exist.”

Wahabzada discussed his desire to make a film about the plight of child laborers in Afghanistan with Nathan French, the director of the Wake Forest Magnolia Scholars Program. In the summer of 2010, French introduced Wahabzada to Jon Bougher, a 2011 Wake Forest documentary film graduate who was then an MFA candidate in the program, and they made plans to work together.

In June 2011, Wahabzada traveled to Kabul researching issues of child labor and working to identify children for the film. Bougher arrived two weeks later. They filmed for three weeks, producing 30 hours of footage for the 24-minute film, which took two months to edit.

The first public screening of “Children of Kabul,” will be April 14 at RiverRun International Film Festival. The film will also be shown April 20. The documentary follows four Afghan children as they try to provide support for their families.

“The most challenging part of making the film was listening to the heartbreaking stories of the children,” says Wahabzada. “They had hopes of becoming doctors, engineers and professors. I knew they would never get the chance.”

Bougher says Wazabhada’s history in Afghanistan helped them gain their subjects’ trust and also access to areas on the streets that would not have been possible for an American filmmaker alone. “We wanted to provide an on-the-ground, visceral sense of life on the streets of Kabul. It was difficult to film in blacksmith shops and street markets without drawing attention, and we had a couple encounters with Afghan police. That Jawad grew up in Kabul allowed us to more easily negotiate these challenges and gain the access we needed.”

“Children of Kabul” and its filmmakers have received recognition for their work on CNN iReport and CNN Backstory.

Wahabzada and Bougher are working with MYPART Foundation to raise funds for the children featured in the documentary.

When graduate student Corey Hewitt (Ph.D. ’13) touches a two-inch square of black fabric, a meter goes berserk.

Simply by touching a small piece of Power Felt – a promising new thermoelectric device developed by a team of researchers in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials – he has converted his body heat into an electrical current.

Comprised of tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric, Power Felt uses temperature differences – room temperature versus body temperature, for instance – to create a charge.

“We waste a lot of energy in the form of heat. For example, recapturing a car’s energy waste could help improve fuel mileage and power the radio, air conditioning or navigation system,” Hewitt says. “Generally thermoelectrics are an underdeveloped technology for harvesting energy, yet there is so much opportunity.”

The research appears in the current issue of Nano Letters, a leading journal in nanotechnology.

Potential uses for Power Felt include lining automobile seats to boost battery power and service electrical needs, insulating pipes or collecting heat under roof tiles to lower gas or electric bills, lining clothing or sports equipment to monitor performance, or wrapping IV or wound sites to better track patients’ medical needs.

“Imagine it in an emergency kit, wrapped around a flashlight, powering a weather radio, charging a prepaid cell phone,” says David Carroll, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials and head of the team leading this research. “Literally, just by sitting on your phone, Power Felt could provide relief during power outages or accidents.”

Cost has prevented thermoelectrics from being used more widely in consumer products. Standard thermoelectric devices use a much more efficient compound called bismuth telluride to turn heat into power in products including mobile refrigerators and CPU coolers, but it can cost $1,000 per kilogram. Like silicon, researchers liken its affordability to demand in volume and think someday Power Felt would cost only $1 to add to a cell phone cover.

Currently Hewitt is evaluating several ways to add more nanotube layers and make them even thinner to boost the power output.

Although there’s more work to do before Power Felt is ready for market, he says, “I imagine being able to make a jacket with a completely thermoelectric inside liner that gathers warmth from body heat, while the exterior remains cold from the outside temperature. If the Power Felt is efficient enough, you could potentially power an iPod, which would be great for distance runners. It’s pretty cool to think about, and it’s definitely within reach.”

Currently Wake Forest is in talks with investors to produce Power Felt commercially.

Computer science graduate student Michael Crouse (BS ’10, MS ’12) spends just as much time thinking about biology as he does technology these days.

Crouse and his faculty mentor, Associate Professor Errin Fulp, apply biological design principles to develop innovative ways of thinking and address modern-day challenges. When addressing the ever-changing and growing concern of cyber security, nature is their blueprint and biology is their inspiration.

Now they are fighting the continual evolution of viruses, worms and malware with evolution. Together, they are developing the first-ever automated computer configurations that adjust as quickly as the threats.

In refining a genetically inspired algorithm that proactively discovers more secure computer configurations, they are leveraging the concept of “survival of the fittest.” Early simulations have shown the increased diversity of each device’s configuration improves overall network safety, without putting undue stress on IT professionals.

“Typically, administrators configure hundreds and sometimes thousands of machines the same way, meaning a virus that infects one could affect any computer on the same network,” says Crouse, who recently was named one of the “nation’s top new inventors” by Inventor’s Digest magazine. “If successful, automating the ability to ward off attacks could play a crucial role in protecting highly sensitive data within large organizations.”

Funded by a grant from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the Wake Forest researchers aim to improve defense mechanisms of similar computing infrastructures with minimal human interaction.

Cyber attacks usually take place in two phases, says Fulp. In the reconnaissance phase, a virus or other threat simply observes the landscape, identifies possible defense mechanisms and looks for the best way in. If nothing has changed since the reconnaissance phase upon return, the virus strikes. But security experts say even the slightest change in environment can make a huge difference in deterring a potential attacker.

“Just as one might try to prevent a home robbery, our goal is to create a ‘moving target defense’ that detects cyber threats when they first case the house,” explains Fulp. “If we can automatically change the landscape by adding the technological equivalent of security cameras or additional lighting, the resulting uncertainty will lower the risk of attack.”

Over the next few months, the team will test its work to transform cyber security. Planned assessment includes integrating the automated system into the computer science department’s annual “hackathon,” giving budding developers the opportunity to improve the system and contribute to its promising outlook.

It’s an important issue of increasing national security concern. Nearly twice as much cyber security funding proposed in the 2013 budget underscores the need for improved computer network defenses. The most recent figures show attacks against federal government networks rose nearly 40 percent in 2010. In fact, inadequate security configurations are blamed for 80 percent of the United States Air Force network vulnerabilities.

Though no one has successfully modeled this complex process before, this is not the first time Fulp and Crouse have used nature as their guide.

Using genetic algorithms for computer configuration adaptation is part of PNNL’s Bio-Inspired Approaches to Moving Target Defense Strategies. In a separate, ongoing cyber security project with PNNL, Fulp and Crouse are training an army of “digital ants” to turn loose into the nation’s power grid to seek out computer viruses trying to wreak havoc on the system. The digital ants technology mimics the way ants think, use scent trails and swarm in nature to detect and prevent cyber attacks.

Fulp is also currently leading a group of Wake Forest faculty in creating an academic center dedicated to the study and teaching of bio-inspiration and biomimicry, a discipline that applies nature’s design principles to develop innovative new ways of thinking.

“Increasingly, conventional solutions are unable to scale to the information or processing required by the massive influx of data. Furthermore, the complexity of many computer systems will necessitate solutions that are more scalable, robust, and flexible than traditional methods can offer,” says Fulp. “Designs found in nature can serve as a source of inspiration, providing robust and efficient methods that are better suited to address these complex problems.”

After spending a semester abroad in the Dominican Republic as an undergraduate, I was excited to have the opportunity to return to Latin America in graduate school through Project Nicaragua.

Project Nicaragua is a student-run organization that travels to Managua and surrounding cities to visit local business owners and teach them business skills. I went with 15 other graduate business students, and though we were supposed to do the teaching, I learned far more than I ever could have anticipated.

After a relaxing weekend (which included a tour of Managua, a zip lining excursion and several amazing Nicaraguan meals), we spent two days visiting local business owners. I expected the businesses to be unprofitable start-ups, located in dilapidated facilities and run by business owners needing a significant amount of help. I completely misjudged the caliber of their operations. All of the businesses were profitable, and the owners were nothing short of impressive.

My group visited eight businesses, including a female-run chemical company, a marmalade-producing farm, and a husband and wife-owned chocolate shop. With the help of a translator, we listened to each of the owners speak about their business’s operations, strengths and opportunities. We used what they told us as the basis for business seminars, which we taught the next two days.

Victoria Osborne

Teaching seminars was intimidating, especially given the fact that these business owners needed less of our help than we anticipated. This turned out to be a good thing, though, in the sense that they related to what they were being taught and shared their relevant personal experiences with the class. It was also pretty cool teaching others concepts I’ve learned over the past six months in the management program (such as cost analysis, cash flow recordkeeping, and networking for example).

They say you don’t really know something until you can teach it to others; I say you don’t really know something until you can teach it to someone who speaks a different language in a way they can understand. After teaching an exhausting three classes, I have a new respect for my professors as well as the business owners who trusted our knowledge enough to attend the seminars.

The last day of teaching we held a graduation ceremony, where participants were given certificates showing that they’d completed the program. Seeing how happy the business owners were after being recognized made the whole experience worth it.

I truly fell in love with Nicaragua during my short nine-day stay. This trip inspired me to return to Latin America, and my next trip will, without a doubt, be a service one. I am thankful to have had this opportunity to add value to the deserving people of this region, and hope to be able to do more for them in the future.

By 14, Petr Ginz had written five novels and a diary about the Nazi occupation of Prague. By 16, he had produced more than 170 drawings and paintings, edited an underground magazine in the Terezin Ghetto and boarded a train to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

But a new Wake Forest Documentary Film Program movie, “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” is a story of celebration as well as tragedy. The film uses the teen’s vivid artwork and creative writing to showcase his imagination, even as his world crumbled around him.

“This is a child who lived in his mind,” said Sandy Dickson, who co-directed the film with Churchill Roberts at the University of Florida. “He was driven by his imagination and his intellectual curiosity, but his work reaches me at an emotional level. When you look at his artwork you see the ghetto, stark and grim. But then you also have fanciful sailing ships and whimsical flying machines.”

“The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” incorporates Petr’s drawings, diary entries, family photos, magazine articles, interviews and animation to shine a light on his extraordinary imagination. The use of animation and a lively original score in the film caught the attention of the United Nations Outreach Programme.

“This documentary really makes Petr’s story accessible to students,” said Kimberly Mann, manager of the Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Programme. “We have partnered with Wake Forest and the International School for Holocaust studies of Yad Veshem to produce a 32-page companion study guide so students ages 13 and up with learn this history, about the UN and the importance of defending human rights around the world.”

The UN will produce the study guide in six languages and send copies of the film to its global network of information centers in 63 countries for special screenings and educational programs for students.

While the film uses archival documents, photos and footage, the team from Wake Forest also traveled to Israel to interview Petr’s sister, Chava Pressburger, whose book “The Diary of Petr Ginz” inspired the project. Pressburger also spent time at Terezin with her brother.

“We were pulled in by her incredible love for Petr,” Dickson said. “On many levels it’s a love story between a brother and a sister.”

The documentary crew includes Cindy Hill, creative editor/associate director; Cara Pilson, director of research/associate director; Peter Gilbert, consulting producer; and Mary Dalton, director of outreach, along with co-director Churchill Roberts of The Documentary Institute at the University of Florida.

“The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” is not yet available to the public. The documentary is about to begin its film festival run, starting with the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in February 2012. The film will be screened in Winston-Salem in the fall.