Seminar - March 22, 2012

Dr. Aaron Severson
[link for research paper and review]
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley
"Keeping sisters together: understanding the mechanisms that ensure genome stability during gamete production in C. elegans"

Thursday, March 22, 2012
12:00 PM, Room W1020 (Becton-Dickinson Auditorium)
School of Public Health

Seminar - March 20, 2012

Dr. Montserrat Anguera
[link for paper]
Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital
"Long noncoding RNAs: roles in stem cell integrity and behavior"

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
12:00 PM, Room W1020 (Becton-Dickinson Auditorium)
School of Public Health

Seminar - March 12, 2012

Dr. Jacob Mueller
[link for research paper]
The Whitehead Institute
"Recent Specialization of the Mammalian X Chromosome"

Monday, March 12, 2012
12:00 PM, Room W1020 (Becton-Dickinson Auditorium)
School of Public Health

Seminar - February 28, 2012

Dr. Chen Chen
[links for research paper and recent review]
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, University of Toronto
"Reading arginine methylation in the germline: the royal family of Tudor domain proteins regulates Piwi pathway and spermatogenesis"

Tuesday, February 28, 2012
12:00 PM, Room W1020 (Becton-Dickinson Auditorium)
School of Public Health

Seminar - February 21, 2012

For a number of the next few Tuesdays, journal club time will be usurped by what should be some terrific seminars. All are welcome for:

Dr. Tony DeFalco [click here for recent publication]
Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical Center
"Beyond the immune: Macrophages in reproductive and stem cell biology"

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
12:15 PM, Room W1020 (Becton-Dickinson Auditorium)
School of Public Health

Feb. 7 , 2012 journal club

• When: Tuesday, Feb. 7, 12:15 PM
• Where: Room E6519, BSPH

A big thank-you to Hyo Lee (from my lab), who I roped in to starting off our journal club for this academic term. She'll be presenting:

Rhythmic actomyosin-driven contractions induced by sperm entry predict mammalian embryo viability

Nature Communications* 2011, 2:417 (Nat Commun is the Nature Publishing Group's new open access journal, another in the mushroom field of open access journals to pop up in the last year or so ... if you're losing count, so am I!)

Ajduk A, Ilozue T, Windsor S, Yu Y, Seres KB, Bomphrey RJ, Tom BD, Swann K, Thomas A, Graham CF, Zernicka-Goetz M. [lab website -- cool pics!]

The paper has some nice imaging of mouse embryos, revealing cellular events that were known to occur in other early embryos. (C. elegans embryos being especially famous for their cytoplasmic flows, and also are a model for events similar to those that Hyo is interested in in her project.) The authors of this paper also try to make the claim that characteristics of these flows will predict what embryos will produce live births -- something that the Assisted Reproductive Technology world would be quite interested in! But see what you think of the data ...

Dec. 6, 2011 journal club

• When: Tuesday, Dec.6, 12:15 PM
• Where: Room E6519, BSPH

Big thanks to Kate Laws of the Drummond-Barbosa lab for volunteering (quite spontaneously) to present for this journal club meeting!! She'll be presenting:

String (Cdc25) regulates stem cell maintenance, proliferation and aging in Drosophila testis
Inaba, Yuan, and Yamashita [lab link]
Development, 138: 5079-5086

Kate's comments about this paper: "Previous papers from the Yamashita lab have addressed centrosome orientation and cell adhesion in the asymmetric division of Drosophila male GSCs, which is definitely interesting (and came up quite a bit during Xin Chen's lecture here last month). While this paper finds no role for String in spindle orientation of GSC or the somatic stem cells in the testis niche, it does deal with another question that's close to both my heart and the hearts of those in my lab: do stem cells regulate their cell cycle differently than their progeny? Additionally, Yukiko was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant earlier this year!"

And as a warm-up for journal club, be sure to go support Kate in her alter ego role, Commander Kate of the JHSPH Happy Hour!