Lisa Poole, a graduate student in the lab of David Cortez, Ph.D., received the 2016 Leon W. Cunningham Award for Excellence in Biochemistry last week during the Biochemistry Department’s annual retreat at the Student Life Center.

One small chemical change to an existing antibacterial drug results in a compound that is more effective against its target enzyme in tuberculosis, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

“Stay with science,” Nobel laureate Peter Agre, M.D., advised dozens of medical and graduate students who attended his lecture at Vanderbilt University Medical Center last week. “It will take you to fascinating places.”

An enzyme that builds DNA is able to insert the wrong building blocks, which could generate mutations.

Telomeres – the caps on the end of chromosomes – are a source of stress for a particular protein involved in copying DNA, a new study reports.

Vanderbilt investigators have generated a “parts list” for the molecular machinery that duplicates DNA each time a cell divides. The research has implications for cancer therapies that target components of this machinery.

Walter Chazin, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology, is a recipient of a 2016 Fellow of the Biophysical Society award.