Congratulations to Ruben Petreaca who together with coPI Renee Bouley (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) was recently awarded an Undergraduate Research Access Innovation Seed Grant from the Office of Undergraduate Education, to begin in July 2024. The proposed study will interrogate whether amino acids that are resistant to change during evolution (e.g., conserved) are also unlikely to be mutated in cancer cells. Students will focus on mutations in 650 driver genes which have been proposed to be significant for cellular transformation and immortalization. This seed grant will fund undergraduate students’ salaries for one year at the OSU Marion Campus and will provide preliminary data for a NSF proposal which will then explore this hypothesis in greater detail.