Mitochondrial dynamics are a key component of maintaining cellular homeostasis. Being dynamic organelles, mitochondria undergo fusion and fission, as well as being actively transported for subcellular localization, and playing an active role throughout the cell cycle, of note, even in apoptosis. Research by Dr. David Chen’s lab focused on perturbations in mitochondrial fusion process. By […]

This research presentation concerned utilized comparative genomics in order to find functional characteristics of the immune response, mapping the response eQTLs to infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Evolutionary changes in anatomy/way of life often based on changes in mecahnisms controlling the expression of genes rather than on sequence changes in proteins – thus, regulation is key […]

With this talk, I was most interested in the methodologies discussed, particularly with regards to the ChIP assyas vs Y1H assays. Having taken a course in bioinformatics and studying various methodologies for mapping physical interactions between regulatory genomic regions/transcription factors, this was particularly fascinating from an engineering perspective, and I went ahead and looked up […]

This lecture amazed me in particular because of the many parallels in the microbial physiology class – particularly, I recalled the lectures on polarity and how cells coordinate their actions together. Going from polarity, I was amazed by the structures which the cells created and the type of testing which was conducting. It reminded me […]

This talk was very related to previous work I have done in the Farquhar lab studying endocytic membrane trafficking. Here this was presented as related in autophagy for the control of cellular remodeling. The work I did concerned Gs proteins and their regulation of endocytic trafficking, along with their effects on cellular membranes remodeling such […]

The study of how miRNA regulates gene expression is cutting edge research, of which the mechanism still aims to be elucidated. I was deeply interested in how the use of bioinformatics and genome-wide analyses powers this type of research in the search for the regulation behind inhibitory strategies. Let-7 was the focus of this talk, […]

This talk was absolutely fascinating, in that it elucidated how molecular mechanisms can control complex social behaviors. Firstly, I was impressed by the use of bee’s as a model system, and can’t imagine what it would be like to work with such insects (I’m fine with mice). With regards to the evolutionary development of bees […]