Skip to main content

Caitlyn’s Corner: Episode XIII – The Last Blog


So, for my last bog post I decided to get a topic idea from the syllabus that our professor gave us. One subject he suggested for our blog post was “The Life and Work of [insert your favorite molecular biologist here]”. Well, for this blog post I am happy to present to ya’ll, The Life and Work of Dr. Christopher Randle.  

Dr. Randle is a well-rounded and respected professor of biological sciences at Sam Houston State University. His official title is Associate Professor of Molecular Systematics. Dr. Randle grew up in Ohio. He received his PhD at Ohio State University. It was also at Ohio State University, where he met his wife, Dr. Sibyl Bucheli. She is also a professor here at SHSU. Dr. Bucheli is an Associate Professor of entomology. Together, this brilliant couple has one daughter and a little dog.

Dr. Randle has worked on a tropical lineage of plant parasites for about 16 years. His research primarily focuses on the connections between molecular and organismal evolution in plants. Over the years, he has focused on the evolution of photosynthetic genes in non-photosynthetic, holoparasitic plants. His love for plants led to his job as a botany professor at SHSU. He scored a job as a molecular biology professor due to his brilliant brain. Dr. Randle has been teaching at SHSU for 11 years. In a recent question from Sampson, Dr. Randle claimed that his job is a pretty easy gig and he loves it.

Dr. Randle is a very busy guy. He might have published a lot more, but I found 3 recent publications. The 3 “recent” publications done by Dr. Randle include the following; Randle, C.P. and K.M. Pickett. 2006. Are non-uniform clade priors important for Bayesian phylogenetic inference: a response to Brandley et al. Systematic Biology 55(1): 147-151, Randle, C.P. and A.D. Wolfe. 2005. The evolution and expression of r bcL in holoparasitic sister-genera HarveyaHook. and Hyobanche L. (Orobanchaceae). American Journal of Botany 92(9): 34-44., and Wolfe, A.D. and C.P. Randle. 2004. Recombination, heteroplasmy, haplotype polymorphism, and paralogy in plastid genes: Implications for plant molecular systematics. Systematic Botany 29: 1011-1020. As you can see his publications are botany related. As most of you know, Dr. Randle is a botanist at heart.

His research has taken him all over the world and he has experienced a few “illnesses” along the way. However, no rash or sickness has ever gotten in his way of learning. Dr. Randle takes all of the information he has ever learned and teaches us everything he knows. He really does an amazing job at teaching and engaging his students and strives to make sure all of his students will be successful in the future. Overall, Dr. Randle is a great professor and a pretty cool guy to chat with!

For more information on this AWESOME professor, please visit his office: LDB 141 or his website: www.shsu.edu/~bio_cpr. You can also reach Dr. Randle at; Phone: (936) 294-1554, Fax: (936) 294-3940, or by E-mail: randle@shsu.



Sources:

Class with Dr. Randle

http://www.shsu.edu/academics/biological-sciences/people/randle.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And you thought your pimple was noticeable!

This week I really had no idea what to talk about. However, that all changed when I tuned into my favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. The episode I am referring to was called   “Super Freak”. In this episode, a man comes into the hospital with a rare condition. This poor man was covered in growths all over his body that looked like tree bark. This rare disease is known as Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV).  Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV) is a rare, autosomal recessive inherited skin disorder. The wart like lesions that resemble tree bark can appear anywhere on the body. These lesions are caused by infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). EV patients have an abnormal or impaired immune response to HPV or wart viruses.  As stated before, EV is an autosomal recessive disease which means that two abnormal EV genes from each parent must be inherited to have the disease. In studying the gene, it has been found that mutations in the EVER1 or EVE...
9 comments
Read more

Molecular Biology in Criminal Investigations

This week’s blog post in not light hearted or funny like my other posts in the past. However, this week I want to share something that is both interesting and serious. Back in the early 50’s, if someone went missing, or came up murdered, the technology used to capture the criminal was not nearly as amazing as what we have today. Specifically, there was a case in 1948 where a woman was brutally raped and murdered in a small English community. There were no witnesses, no one knew anything about that tragic night. However, the cops were able to find one thing left behind that would help them solve this murder case. The murder left a fingerprint behind on a glass bottle found at the crime scene. After gathering over 45,000 fingerprints, the murderer was finally found and convicted. Fingerprints are very unique, and no two people in the world have the EXACT same prints. This is why fingerprints are one of the first things looked for in a criminal investigation.   But what happ...
5 comments
Read more

The unanswered questions from Dr. Randle…Okazaki Fragments

Since my group seems to always be the target of this question, and I highly doubt Dr. Randle will ever let us move on without correctly answering his questions; this week I am going to talk about Okazaki Fragments. For a quick definition, Okazaki fragments are short, newly synthesized DNA fragments that are formed on the lagging template strand during DNA replication. However, for this blog, I want to talk about the people behind this discovery. First, let’s start by discussing a pretty cool guy named Reiji Okazaki. Mr. Okazaki was a was a pioneer Japanese molecular biologist. He was known for his research on DNA replication and for describing the role of Okazaki fragments along with his wife Tsuneko. That’s right people, credit can be given to a woman scientist who was just as smart as man scientist back in the late 60’s. Tsuneko was pretty amazing. She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2000. She was also elected as a Person of Cultural Merit in 2015. B...
5 comments
Read more