Fernando Melara Barahona wins presentation award at ABRCMS!

Jonathan Coravos gave an amazing seminar and successfully defended his thesis. Well done Jonathan! Have fun in Chile!

Congratulations to Jaci Camuglia and Anna Yeh on passing their Ph.D. candidacy exams! Excited to see what research directions we go in over the next few years.

Congratulations to Marlis Denk-Lobnig on a wonderful thesis talk! Marlis is moving on to do a postdoc at the University of Michigan.

Congratulations to postdoc, Frank Mason, for the recent publication of his paper, “Apical domain polarization promotes actin-myosin assembly to drive ratchet-like apical constriction” on Nature Cell Biology. In the paper, Mason et al. show that the signals that regulate contractile forces in constricting cells exhibit a spatial organization within the apical domain of the cell. Signals that activate myosin motors are polarized to the center of the apical domain. Actin polymerization in this domain suppresses junctional protein localization, restricting junctional proteins to cell-cell interfaces. Thus, a “radial” cell polarity is established, which is shown to be important for apical constriction.

Congratulations Fernando on a productive summer and successfully presenting your poster at the end of summer program. We look forward to seeing what you do in the future!