Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Nov. 30, 2010 journal club

When and where:
Room E6519, Tuesday, Nov. 30, 12:15.

Rachel from the Matunis lab will be presenting:

Functional hierarchy and reversibility within the murine spermatogenic stem cell compartment
Nakagawa et al.
Science, 2010, 328:62-67

Rachel's comment on this paper:
"I picked this one because it beautifully illustrates that the mouse germline is not simply a linear path of cells that is fed by stem cells balancing self renewal and differentiation. Spermatogonia on their way down a path of differentiation can revert toward a more undifferentiated state to keep the germline in balance. Of course we already had hints of this from the awesome model system that is Drosophila but it is always reassuring to find that observations in model organisms hold true up the evolutionary ladder. Previously, in a paper that Becca did for RBJC, (Barroca et al.) it was shown that spermatogonia (no stem cells) could be transplanted into gamma irradiated mice with no functional germline niche, and the transplanted cells could reconstitute the niche. This suggested that these cells were capable of dedifferentiating but this paper is the first to make this observation in vivo in a wildtype (i.e., non-transplanted) situation."

Other papers that Rachel notes are of interest:
Spralding and Fan, "Counterfeiting the family jewels," Cell Stem Cell, 2010, 6:405-406.
Klein et al., "Mouse germ line stem cells undergo rapid and stochastic turnover," Cell Stem Cell, 2010, 7:214-224.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Nov. 16, 2010 journal club

When and where:
Room W2303, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 12:15.
(Note the different room -- we got bumped from E6519 for this week, and will be in the room on the 2nd floor that we used most of last year.)

Newly-defended Leesa (that's DR. LaFever to you!) from the Drummond-Barbosa lab will be presenting:

TGF-β and insulin signaling regulate reproductive aging via oocyte and germline quality maintenance
Luo, Kleeman, Ashraf, Shaw, and Murphy
Cell, 2010, 143:299-312

A nice complement to the Oct. 19 journal club, and recently highlighted in the NYT as well!