Lab News
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!
Welcome Jeanne Jodoin
Jeanne comes to us from Vanderbilt University where she received a Ph.D. for her work on the mechanisms of dynein motor localization.
Jonathan Coravos Passed Qualifying Exam
Congratulations to graduate student, Jonathan Coravos, on passing his qualifying exam.
Frank Mason publishes Nature Cell Biology paper
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.
Welcome Natalie Heer
Biology graduate student, Natalie Heer, joins the lab. Natalie received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University where she worked in the Reck-Peterson lab on dynein motility.
Mimi Xie Passed Qualifying Exam
Congratulations to graduate student, Mimi Xie, on passing her qualifying exam.
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.
Jonathan Coravos publishes Developmental Cell paper
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.
Frank Mason publishes JCB paper
Congratulations Frank on publishing his work “LRhoA GTPase Inhibition Organizes Contraction During Epithelial Morphogenesis” in The Journal of Cell Biology! Frank showed how inhibiting RhoA can promote contraction during tissue folding. And read the Spotlight article on our paper, written by Alpha Yap. Also, congratulations on your new position as a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University!
Mimi Xie publishes MBoC paper
Congratulations Mimi Xie for publishing her work “Loss of Gα12/13 Exacerbates Apical Area-dependence of Actomyosin Contractility” in Molecular Biology of the Cell! Mimi showed how apical actin density can depend on apex size. Suppressing this dependence is important to coordinate contractility across a tissue.
Jeanne Jodoin publishes MBoC paper
Congratulations Jeanne Jodoin for publishing her work “Abl Suppresses Cell Extrusion and Intercalation During Epithelium Folding” in Molecular Biology of the Cell! Jeanne showed how the Abelson tyrosine kinase suppresses an EMT-like cell extrusion during tissue folding.
Hannah Yevick awarded NIH F32 fellowship
Congratulations to Dr. Hannah Yevick for being awarded a prestigious NIH fellowship.