Hannah Yevick starts Assistant Professor position

Congratulations Jeanne Jodin, for publishing her work “Stable Force Balance between Epithelial Cells Arises from F-Actin Turnover” in Developmental Cell. Jeanne showed that stable force balance between cells in a tissue requires robust actin filament turnover. The paper was also highlighted by the journal. Read the paper and the highlight article.

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 graduate student, Juana De La O, on passing her qualifying exam.

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 Soline on the publication of a book chapter Mechanical Force Sensing in Tissues!

Congratulations to graduate student, Marlis Denk-Lobnig, on passing her qualifying exam.