Welcome Mingmar Sherpa!

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 Dr. Jackson on defending your PhD and getting a postdoc position in Germany.  Best of luck.

Graduate students Anna Yeh and Jaclyn Camuglia publish book chapter on morphogenesis titled Extracellular Tension and Tissue Morphogenesis.

Biology student Marlis Denk-Lobnig joins the lab. Marlis did her undergraduate work at Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany. Marlis is interested in applying computational approaches to studying signaling networks in an embryo.

Congratulations to graduate student, Natalie Heer, on giving an excellent research presentation and successfully defending her thesis. Best of luck at your new position as a Data Scientist.

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.