Jaci Camuglia and Anna Yeh passed Ph.D. candidacy exams

We have a number of new additions to the lab including postdocs Jasmin Imran Alsous and Nat Clarke, graduate students Anna Yeh and Jaclyn Camuglia, undergraduates Prateek Kalakuntla and Jennifer Nwako, and technician Vardges Tserunyan.

Juana De La O comes to us from the University of Chicago and the MIT Biology PhD program.

Congratulations to Soline on publishing her work “Actomyosin Meshwork Mechanosensing Enables Tissue Shape to Orient Cell Force” in Nature Communications. Soline discovered a mechanism by which tissue and organism shape can instruct cells how to generate force. This has implications in understanding how tissues and organs acquire their correct shape.

Congratulations to graduate student, Marlis Denk-Lobnig, who was featured in the MIT Biology department news. Read the article.

Congratulations Jonathan on publishing his work “Apical Sarcomere-like Actomyosin Contracts Nonmuscle Drosophila Epithelial Cells” in Developmental Cell. Jonathan discovered that the apical actin cortex of an epithelial cell can be organized like a muscle sarcomere to promote contraction and tissue folding.

Postdoc Mary Ann Collins publishes paper from her PhD work in Molecular Biology of the Cell. One of her microscopy images was selected for the cover!