September 27, 2011 journal club

And we're off to the races for AY 2011-2012!
We'll meet Tuesday, Sept. 27, 12:15 in Room E6519.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Ables of the Drummond-Barbosa lab for kicking us off.
She'll be presenting:

Loss of lysine specific demethylase 1 nonautonomously causes stem cell tumors in the Drosophila ovary
S. Eliazer, N.A. Shalaby, and M. Buszczak
PNAS 2011, 108:7032

She says, "I chose this paper because it describes an intriguing role for epigenetic modifiers, specifically the conserved histone demethylase Lsd1, functions (1) during development to regulate the size of the Drosophila germline stem cell (GSC) niche, and (2) in adult somatic tissue adjacent to the GSCs to limit the production of niche-specific signals that maintain GSCs. Cell autonomous epigenetic control of GSCs has been demonstrated by several labs (including the [Erika] Matunis lab), but to my knowledge, this is the the first report demonstrating that epigenetic modifications also control somatic niche cell development and function."

MRD/UPenn Conference on Reproduction and Regeneration, June 13-14, 2011

There is a nearby (and FREE!) conference coming up that I thought many of you would be interested in:
The 2011 Annual MRD conference on Reproduction and Regeneration
June 13-14, in Philadelphia, PA,
sponsored by the journal Molecular Reproduction and Development (and publisher Wiley-Blackwell).

Gary Wessel, editor-in-chief of MRD, describes the conference:
"This year's version, v3.0, will be at UPenn in collaboration with the Center for Research in Reproduction and Women's Health, and the Institute for Regenerative Medicine. This year's edition is value-added by partnering with the groups at UPenn. Registration is Free - Poster session with awards - lots of food - ~25 speakers - workshop on bioinformatics. Should be lots of fun."

The conference and workshop will be held on the University of Pennsylvania campus in the Auditorium of the new Translational Research Center (TRC) building, adjacent to the the new Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.

If you have questions, I'm sure that Gary would be happy to help out (his email address: rhet@brown.edu).

Thesis defense of Erin Stanley

Erin Stanley of the Zirkin lab will be presenting her dissertation defense seminar:

"Leydig cell stem/progenitor cells in neonatal, adult and aged testes"

Tuesday, May 31, 2011
10 AM
Room 1020 (Becton-Dickinson Hall), School of Public Health

Congratulations, Erin, and good luck!

May 17, 2011 journal club

When and where: Tuesday, May 17, 12:15 PM, Room E6519

Dolly of the Wright lab will be presenting:

Sin3a Is Required by Sertoli Cells to Establish a Niche for Undifferentiated Spermatogonia, Germ Cell Tumors, and Spermatid Elongation
Stem Cells (2010), 28:1424-1434
Payne, Gallagher, Foreman, Dannenberg, Depinho, and Braun

Dolly says, "I choose this paper because of its focus on Sertoli cells, an area that I am not too familiar with but most interested in further exploring.* The authors were interested in studying how the regulation of Sertoli cell chromatin is affected during fetal and juvenile periods of testis development and how it influences the establishment of the germ stem cell niche -- especially since Sertoli cells are sensitive to epigenetic alternation and play a role in the maintenance and formation of undifferentiated spermatogonia."

* Blog keeper's comment: Hey, good for you, Dolly!

April 26, 2011 journal club

When and where: Room E6519, Tuesday, April 26, 12:15 PM

Andrew Wolfe will be presenting -- and I'm really excited about the paper he picked:

Endocrine regulation of male fertility by the skeleton
Cell 144:796-809
Oury et al.
Gerard Karsenty website at Columbia
Commentary on this paper

... as this paper is one that caught my eye, and I posted it with suggestions for a "DIY" journal club to replace the March 22 one. It's also a paper that some outside the reproductive biology community are noticing and have asked me about -- so it catching some attention. We'll discuss to determine if it's truth or fiction, or somewhere in between!

April 12, 2011 journal club

When and where: Room W2303, Tuesday, April 12, 12:15 PM

Shiying Jin of the Zirkin lab will present:

Protein tyrosine kinase WEE1B is essential for metaphase II exit in mouse oocytes
Oh JS, Susor A, and Conti M [Marco Conti's UCSF webpage]
Science 2011, ePub ahead of print (DOI: 10.1126/science.1199211)

This paper presents the interesting finding that (as the abstract states), "... exit from metaphase requires not only a proteolytic degradation of cyclin B, but also the inhibitory phosphorylation of Cdc2 by Wee1B," as well as reveals an additional role for Calcium/Calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) in the egg-to-embryo transition. This work also extends what we know about WEE1B functions in oocytes, complementing previous work of the Conti lab on the role of WEE1B in prophase I arrest (Curr Biol, 15:1670).

No RBJC on March 22

Alas, we will be canceling the previously scheduled March 22 RBJC meeting.
But chin up! Do your own personal journal club!
There are a number of cool papers out there ... perhaps some inspiration for a paper pick for a future RBJC lies in this list of a few things that have been on my reading list:

Endocrine regulation of male fertility by the skeleton
Cell 144:796-809
Commentary

Insulin/FOXO signaling regulates ovarian prostaglandins critical for reproduction
Dev Cell 19:858

Most mouse spermatozoa begin their acrosome reaction before contact with the zona pellucida during in vitro fertilization
PNAS in press
Commentary 1
Commentary 2 [requires JHED sign-in]

MITOPLD is a mitochondrial protein essential for nuage formation and piRNA biogenesis in the mouse germline
Dev Cell 20:364-375
piRNA-associated germline nuage formation and spermatogenesis require MitoPLD profusogenic mitochondrial-surface lipid signaling
Dev Cell 20:376-387
Commentary

See you for our next meeting, April 12!
(We are skipping a week because a bunch of us will be away for the North American Testis Workshop and/or American Society of Andrology meeting)