Nov. 2, 2010 journal club

When and where:
Room E6519, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 12:15.

Jenn Wang from the Seydoux lab will be presenting:

Bucky ball organizes germ plasm assembly in zebrafish
Bontems, Stein, Marlow, Lyautey, Gupta, Mullins, and Dosch
Current Biology, 19:414-422


Jenn's comment on this paper selection:
"It's long been known that germ cell fate in many animals is specified by a specialized maternal cytoplasm, or germ plasm. However, the components of germ plasm and its assembly mechanisms are only recently beginning to be known. This paper shows that the Bucky ball protein is necessary for germ plasm assembly in zebrafish. Excitingly, they have some evidence that bucky ball may also be sufficient for germ cell formation. If I have time at the end, I will talk a little bit about our work on C. elegans germ granule partitioning, which has been thought to specify worm germ cells."

Oct. 19, 2010 journal club

When and where:
Room E6519 (same as Sept. 21), Tuesday, Oct. 19, 12:15.

Lauren from the Evans lab will be presenting:

L. Lister, A. Kouznetsova, L. Hyslop, D. Kalleas, S. Pace, J. Barel, A. Nathan, V. Floros, C. Adelfalk and Y. Watanabe et al.,
Age-related meiotic segregation errors in mammalian oocytes are preceded by depletion of cohesin and Sgo2
Curr. Biol. 20 (2010), pp. 1511–1521.

... Ah, among the greatest stresses to many a female is the concept that "advanced maternal age" starts at 35. (I get numerous looks of disappointment as I lecture about this in my basic reproductive biology class, and note that it is indeed a biological reality of the way females do meiosis.) Here is Lauren's comments of why she picked this paper:
"It is well known that meiotic segregation errors are more common with increased maternal age, but surprisingly the molecular basis of these meiotic errors are not completely understood. As the trend for women to delay childbearing grows, it becomes critical to understand "what makes a good egg go bad" (this is part of the title of a recent review by Pat Hunt and Terry Hassold). The paper I chose explores the loss of chromosome cohesion as an important factor in age-related meiotic errors. While this is not directly related to my research, this paper helps to address a critical question in the field of reproductive biology that potentially has huge implications for human health."

Also, Hunt and Hassold did a commentary on the three papers on this topic that were published together in this issue of Current Biology:
Hunt and Hassold commentary
Renenkova et al., Curr. Biol. 20 (2010), pp. 1529–1533
Chiang et al., Curr. Biol. 20 (2010), pp. 1522–1528

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!