How circuit wiring is specified is a key question in developmental neurobiology. Previously, using the Drosophila motor system as a model, Meng and colleagues found the classic temporal transcription factor Hunchback acts in NB7-1 neuronal stem cells to control the number of NB7-1 neuronal progeny form functional synapses on dorsal muscles (Meng et al., 2019). However, it is unknown to what extent control of motor neuron-to-muscle synaptic partnerships is a general feature of temporal transcription factors.
Sampriti Mukherjee has joined the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. The overarching goal of her lab is to understand how bacteria decode and integrate self-generated and environmentally-derived stimuli to control transitions between individual and collective behaviors.
Amanda Keplinger (Cell and Molecular Biology) has been named a 2020 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (NSF GRFP). Her advisor is Alexander Ruthenburg.
The health, safety and well-being of our BSD community, on and off-campus, is our top priority. We will continue to update the community regularly to keep you informed. Information on BSD-specific resources can be found here. Also please continue to consult the University and University of Chicago Medicine guidance as appropriate.
A new Developmental Cell paper by CMB graduate student Kasey Day overturns a longstanding view that the endocytic pathway in yeast mirrors that in mammalian cells. The authors systematically characterized the dynamics of the budding yeast endocytic pathway by tracking the movement of an internalized dye. This study from the
New technology developed in the Ruthenburg lab exposes widely held assumptions about antibody specificity and the practices of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) to be highly flawed. A recent Molecular Cell study led by undergraduate Rohan Shah and CMB graduate student Adrian Grzybowski, discovered that conventional methods for “validating antibodies” for use in ChIP display poor specificity.
Pulsed contractility is a dynamic form of actomyosin contractility that underlies many different kinds of morphogenetic processes. In a new paper published in the Journal of Cell Biology, CMB graduate student John Michaux and colleagues in the Munro Lab combine multicolor live imaging, single molecule analysis, genetic manipulations and mathematical modeling to identify a core biochemical circuit for pulsed contractility in early C. elegans embryos.
