Lab News
Congratulations Dr. Xie
Mimi Xie successfully defended her thesis. She gave an excellent seminar to our community. Nice job Mimi!
Hannah Yevick Wins Nano-K 2015 Thesis Prize
Congratulations Hannah Yevick, for winning the Nano-K 2015 Thesis Prize for interdisciplinary research. This is a national award in France for excellent PhD theses that cross disciplines.
Congratulations Dr. Vasquez
Welcome Hannah Yevick
Hannah received her Ph.D. from the Institut Curie in Paris, France. Her Bachelor’s degree is in Physics and she published a really cool paper on cells walking a “tightrope.” She is interested in collective cell behavior changing tissue shape.
Jeanne Jodoin awarded NIH F32 Fellowship
Congratulations to Jeanne Jodoin, who was awarded a prestigious NIH F32 postdoctoral fellowship.
Elena Kingston wins poster prize
Congratulations Elena Kingston on winning the best poster prize at the Building 68 retreat. We have won a poster prize each year for the past 3 years. Nice job Mimi, Claudia, and now Elena.
Welcome Clint Ko
Biology graduate student, Clint Ko, is joining our lab. Clint was an undergrad at Cornell University where he worked on plant development. We are happy he has turned to the fruit fly for his next system.
Mimi Xie’s paper in Nature Communications
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.
Welcome Yujie Li
Yujie joins us from the University of Chicago where she completed her Ph.D. with David Kovar. For her graduate work, Yujie worked on developing in vitro assays for imaging molecular interactions with actin filaments.
Claudia Vasquez publishes paper in The JCB
Congratulations graduate student Claudia Vasquez on her publication “Dynamic myosin phosphorylation regulates contractile pulses and tissue integrity during epithelial morphogenesis” in The Journal of Cell Biology. Claudia’s paper was also highlighted in a video interview with the JCB news editor.
Welcome Elena Kingston
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.
Soline Chanet publishes a book chapter
Congratulations Soline on the publication of a book chapter Mechanical Force Sensing in Tissues!
Natalie publishes Development review
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.
Soline publishes Current Biology paper
Congratulations to Soline on publishing her work “Myosin 2-Induced Mitotic Rounding Enables Columnar Epithelial Cells to Interpret Cortical Spindle Positioning Cues” in Current Biology. Soline showed how mitotic cell rounding is critical to orient cell division such that both daughter cells remain in the tissue.
Marlis Passed Qualifying Exam
Congratulations to graduate student, Marlis Denk-Lobnig, on passing her qualifying exam.
Soline publishes Nature Communications paper
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.
Natalie publishes Development paper
Congratulations Natalie on publishing her work “Actomyosin-based Tissue Folding Requires a Multicellular Myosin Gradient” in Development. Natalie discovered that a tissue-wide gradient in transcription and resulting contractility is necessary to fold a tissue. We had fun collaborating with Pearson Miller and the Dunkel Lab on this project.
Congratulations Dr. Coravos
Jonathan Coravos gave an amazing seminar and successfully defended his thesis. Well done Jonathan! Have fun in Chile!
Claudia Vasquez publishes eLife paper
Congratulations Claudia on publishing her work “Drosophila Non-muscle Myosin II Motor Activity Determines the Rate of Tissue Folding” in eLife. Claudia demonstrated that myosin 2 motor activity sets the rate of apical constriction and tissue folding, showing that myosin 2 is the motor that drives these processes. This work was the result of a great collaboration with James Sellers’ lab at the National Institutes of Health.
Lab wins Halloween group costume contest
The Martin lab won the coveted group costume competition for the Biology department Halloween party. They had a winning combination of fish-like pillows and various forms of wasabi.