Juana De La O passed qualifying exam

Congratulations to graduate student, Mimi Xie, for her publication “Intracellular signalling and intercellular coupling coordinate heterogeneous contractile events to facilitate tissue folding” in Nature Communications. In the paper, Mimi showed that cells exhibit three classes of contractile events, unconstricting, unratcheted, and ratcheted. Mimi demonstrated that cells undergo transitions between different classes of contractions, going from unconstricting or unratcheted contractions to ratcheted contractions. A transcription factor that regulates this developmental stage is important for the proper order of contractile events. It is important for cells to generate ratcheted contractions because this promotes cooperation between cells.

Congratulations to graduate student, Natalie Heer, for publishing her review article “Tension, Contraction and Tissue Morphogenesis” in Development. Natalie contributed to the special issue celebrating the 100th anniversary of “On Growth and Form.” Her review article describes the latest research explaining how forces are generated to sculpt tissues.

Adam Martin has been promoted to Associate Professor, effective July 1, 2016.

Elena, our new Technical Assistant, graduated from Swarthmore College in May 2014. Elena spent a summer doing research in David Stern’s lab at Janelia Farm.

Graduate student Clint Ko and Undergraduate Prateek Kalakuntla publish MBoC paper on how mitotic entry can repress ‘active’ contractility and result in relaxation that promotes neighboring tissue folding.

Congratulations to Dr. Hannah Yevick for being awarded a prestigious NIH fellowship.