Oct. 5, 2010 journal club

When and where:
Room E6519 (same as Sept. 21), Tuesday, Oct. 5, 12:15.

Elizabeth from the Drummond-Barbosa lab will be presenting:

Control of mammary stem cell function by steroid hormone signaling
Asselin-Labet et al.
Nature 465: 798-802

As Elizabeth notes, "It's not ovary or testes related, but there is more to 'reproductive biology' (at least in mammals) than just those two organs!" Indeed ... and I say double-bonus that this paper has stem cells and steroids in it.

FYI - Corresponding author Geoff Lindemann website

Seminar of interest, Sept. 27, 2010

This coming Monday will be the Larry L. Ewing Lecture, and the speaker this year is Haifan Lin of Yale University, and the title of his talk is, "A novel small RNA-mediated epigenetic mechanism related to stem cells." (some pretty darn good keywords, huh!?) For those interested, here is a link to a semi-recent (2007) review on piRNAs and the proteins with which they interact; the seminar will present Haifan's latest findings.

Date: Sept. 27, 2010; 4:00 PM (to be followed by a reception)
Place: Sheldon Hall (Room W1214), Bloomberg School of Public Health

Should be a winner (not to mention a nice way to celebrate the life of Larry Ewing) ... please come!

Sept. 21, 2010 journal club

The where and when:
Room E6519 in the SPH, Tuesday, September 21 at 12:15.

We'll venture into developmental biology relevant to reproductive biology, with Erin's presentation of:

Notch and Egft signaling act antagonistically to regulate germ-line stem cell niche formation in Drosophila male embryonic gonads

Kitadate and Kobayashi, PNAS 2010, 107: 14241-14246

RBJC schedule for fall 2010

Our meetings for September-December are below --
every other Tuesday, 12:15-1:30.

• Presenters - The room reservation starts at 12:00, so you can get in a little early for set-up.
• Everyone - Please note that we are in two different rooms (alas, we couldn't get E6519 for all our meetings).

9/21/10 - Erin Stanley (Zirkin lab) - Room E6519 (6th floor, southern side of bldg)
10/5/10 - Elizabeth Ables (Drummond-Barbosa lab) - Room E6519
10/19/10 - Lauren Matthews (Evans lab) - Room E6519
11/2/10 - Jenn Wang (Seydoux lab) - Room E6519
11/16/10 - Leesa LaFever (Drummond-Barbosa lab) - Room W2303
11/30/10 - Min-Young Kim (Drummond-Barbosa lab) - Room W2303
12/14/10 - Hyo Lee (Evans lab) - Room W2303

(Thanks to everyone who stepped up to present in the first part of the academic year! I'll be after more recruits for starting in January 2011.)

BTW, if you want to present a paper that is linked with your own research, great -- but that's not a requirement. Just choose a paper that's interesting and discussion-worthy! For presentation of your own research, we'll experiment with an alternative to what we did last year (i.e., present the paper, then discuss how your research fits in) ... more to come on this when we meet.

Thesis defense of Chris Cherry

One of our own, Chris Cherry of the Matunis lab, will be presenting his thesis defense talk:

Monday, April 26, 2010, 3:30 P.M.
Bodian Conference Room
1830 Building, Suite 2-200
Epigenetically controlled stem cells on steroids

(yeah, I agree -- catchy title!)

Congratulations, Chris!

April 20, 2010 journal club

We'll be gathering in Room W2303 at 12:30 on Tuesday, April 20.
Shiying Jin from the Zirkin Lab will be presenting:

TGFbeta signaling in male germ cells regulates gonocyte quiesecence and fertility in mice
Dev. Biol. in press
Moreno et al.

Abstract: During testis development, proliferation and death of gonocytes are highly regulated to establish a standard population of adult stem spermatogonia that maintain normal spermatogenesis. As Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGFbeta) can regulate proliferation and apoptosis, we investigated its expression and functions during testis development. We show that TGFbeta2 is only expressed in quiescent gonocytes and decreases gonocyte proliferation in vitro. To study the functions of TGFbeta2, we developed conditional mice that invalidate the TGFbeta receptor type II in germ cells. Most of the knock-out animals die during fetal life, but the surviving adults show a reduced pool of spermatogonial stem/progenitor cells and become sterile with time. Using an organ culture system mimicking in vivo development, we show higher proportions of proliferating and apoptotic gonocytes from 13.5 dpc until 1 dpp, suggesting a reduction of germinal quiescence in these animals. Conversely, a 24-hour TGFbeta2-treatment of explanted wild-type testes, isolated every day from 13.5 dpc until 1 dpp, increased the duration of quiescence. These data show that the TGFbeta signaling pathway plays a physiological role during testis development by acting directly as a negative regulator of the fetal and neonatal germ cell proliferation, and indicate that the TGFbeta signaling pathway might regulate the duration of germ cell quiescence and is necessary to maintain adult spermatogenesis.

Two Matunis lab members presenting at Young Investigators' Day

Congratulations, Mel and Becca!

School of Medicine Young Investigators' Day
April 15, 2010, , 4:00 PM, PCTB, Mountcastle Auditorium

Melanie Issigonis
"Regulation of Stem Cell Competition in the Drosophila Testis Niche"
Paul Ehrlich Research Award

Xuting Rebecca Sheng
"Novel Mechanisms for Germline Stem Cell Regeneration"
David Israel Macht Research Award