Notes
to editors and news directors:
A photo of Professor McQueen and her students is available
here:
http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/images/CSULA-McQueen-students.jpg
Glendale’s McQueen earns
key biotech research honor
CSUPERB cites Cal State L.A. professor’s work
tracking
virus mutations
Los Angeles,
CA –
You’d expect Cal State L.A. biology professor and
Glendale resident
Nancy McQueen to have an infectious smile,
especially when it comes to talking about her Cal State
L.A. students’ role in her virus research.
Collaborating over nearly two decades with a string of
roughly 60 (mostly graduate) students, McQueen has been
precisely tracking the mutations in genes that alter the
pathogenicity—or disease-causing strength—of Sendai
virus, a rodent-infecting organism similar to the human
influenza virus. Their work has led to numerous advances
in understanding how mutated genes alter the molecular
machinery behind the infection process.
It
also prompted the
California State University Program for Education and
Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) recently to
present McQueen its
2008 Biotechnology Faculty Research Award.
Each year, the award honors one professor from
throughout the 23-campus CSU system for outstanding
scientific achievement in molecular life science and
biotechnology research. Last year it went to
Cal State L.A.’s Frank Gomez. The honoring of
McQueen marked the first time in the award’s 18-year
history that it went to the same campus in consecutive
years.
In
her office McQueen hoisted the award’s trophy—a hefty
gold-painted rotor from an ultracentrifuge—and credited
her students. Among her former graduate students, 20
have continued on to Ph.D. programs, seven entered
medical school, and one earned a dental degree.
Currently her research team includes seven graduate
students and a technician.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from
Cal Poly Pomona, McQueen worked as a licensed medical
technologist. She received her doctorate in microbiology
and immunology from the UCLA Medical School in 1986 and
then trained at the Beckman Research Institute at the
City of Hope.
Since joining Cal State L.A.’s faculty in 1989, she has
received more than $1.3 million in research funding from
the National Institutes of Health. She teaches a wide
variety of courses including General Medical
Microbiology, Pathogenic Bacteriology, Virology,
Hematology, and Molecular Diagnostics.
More
about the research:
Working with wild-type Sendai strains that cause
localized respiratory tract infections in lab mice and a
mutant strain that causes a systemic infection, the
McQueen lab has been able to identify the genes critical
for the mutant’s ability to cause a systemic infection.
To
find out what is unique about the genes that trigger
this systemic infection, they are now employing the
“sexy technique” of reverse genetics, McQueen said.
“It means that you’re actually making viruses that have
defined mutations in them,” she said.
As
in any high-performance machine shop, precision in
technique is necessary to yield precise results. “We
know what change (in the DNA’s strand) will result in
what amino acid (the building blocks of proteins)… and
what protein will result when the virus is expressed.”
She and her students use another technique—called
transfection—that inserts mutated DNA into tissue
culture cells. “It’s a complicated process,” she said,
“but eventually out of tissue culture, we’ve made a new
virus.” Modern researchers used the same technique to
reconstitute the Spanish influenza virus that claimed
more than 20 million lives in a 1918 pandemic.
According to Sandra Sharp, also a biology professor at
Cal State L.A., McQueen’s research has “the potential to
increase our understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms
of influenza virus and to find new applications for
current antiviral treatments.”
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