Work in Progress(WIP)
Tuesdays,9:00am-10:00am, Room C2303 MCN
A note from your local DGS
From Dr. Aiken
Congratulations to our newly elected officers for 2016-2017!!
President: Amber Beckett
Vice President: Stephanie Carnes
Journal Club Coordinators: Lorenna Harvey and Austin Featherstone
Student Invited Speaker: Aimee Wilde and Zach Lonergan
Communications Officer: Ly Pham
Social Committee Chairs: Allison Eberly, Jordan Anderson-Daniels, and Lauren Williamson
Sommeliers: Hunter Gibbons and Kevin Childress
GSA Representative: Rhonda Caston
If anyone that was not at the meeting has any concerns about their position, please let the new president Amber Beckett know.
Another Important Reminder from Dr. Aiken:
M&I Poster Session for incoming IGP & QCB students will be from 1:00-3:30 on August 31 in the North Lobby of Light Hall. Come enjoy some ice cream and meet some new students and new M&I faculty!
A strong MP Showing at Microbiology Gordon Research Conferences:
This year has been great in terms of division member representation at the prestigious Gordon Research Conferences. Lillian Juttukonda (Skaar Lab) and Aimee Wilde (Cassat Lab) were selected for oral presentations at the Microbial Toxins & Pathogenicity GRC! Below is a photo showing present and past MP members at this conference!
(Left to right Back Row:Nora Foegeding, Jim Cassat, Aimee Wilde, Tim Cover, Victor Torres, Eric Skaar, Thomas Kiehl-Fie
Left to right Front Row: Lillian Juttukonda, Lauren Palmer, Michelle Reniere, Carrie Shaffer, Borden Lacy)
Division Announcements
- August 12 - MP 2nd Friday Happy Hour - Sebastian Joyce, Luc Van Kaer labs will be hosting.
- August 17 - VICB annual student research symposium is taking place at the student life center from 8am - 5pm. Come see many of our own students and post-docs give oral presentations: Kyle A. Floyd (Hadjifrangiskou Lab; VICB prize finalist); Will Beavers (Skaar Lab); Maria Angostini (Denison Lab); Dorothy Ackerman (Townsend Lab in collaboration with the Aronoff lab). Link to event: http://vanderbilt.edu/vicb/student_symposia/2016Symposium/symposium_2016_registration.html
- NEW SEMINAR SERIES: The Pediatric and Adult Infectious Disease, Rheumatology and Molecular Pathogenesis Divisions, Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, Center for Microbial Pathogenesis, and Center for Immunobiology have teamed up in an expansion of the Ped’s ID seminars for the Infection, Inflammation, and Immunity Frontiers seminar series. By combining resources, we have been able to put together a great schedule of high level outside speakers that should be of interest to everyone. The first speaker is coming soon! The Vaccine Center is hosting Galit Alter of Harvard University on Tuesday August 23 at 11am in Light Hall 512.
- Congratulations to Reece Knippel from the Skaar lab for winning the best poster award at Anaerobe 2016!
- A total of 47 publications featuring commentaries, reviews and primary research have posted on NCBI from faculty in our division since last month's myMP. Congratulations to Dr. Mark Boothby for his latest publication in the journal Nature!
If you would like to contribute an article highlight, from your lab or the lab of a colleague within MP, please feel free to email us.
The Division of Molecular Pathogenesis now has its own Twitter Feed. Follow us: @VandyMolecPath
17. Recognition of influenza H3N2 variant virus by human neutralizing antibodies.Bangaru S, Nieusma T, Kose N, Thornburg NJ, Finn JA, Kaplan BS, King HG, Singh V, Lampley RM, Sapparapu G, Cisneros A 3rd, Edwards KM, Slaughter JC, Edupuganti S, Lai L, Richt JA, Webby RJ, Ward AB, Crowe JE Jr. JCI Insight. 2016 Jul 7;1(10). pii: e86673.
Featured Publication: "Germinal centre hypoxia and regulation of antibody qualities by a hypoxia response system"
Sung Hoon Cho et al., Nature 2016, Aug. 8, doi. 10.1038/Nature19334
Germinal centers (GCs) promote humoral immunity and vaccine efficacy. In GCs, antigen-activated B lymphocytes proliferate, are selected for high affinity antibody (Ab), promote Ab class switching, and yield B cell memory
In this work by Cho et al., the authors demonstrate that the GC light zones are hypoxic and low oxygen (pO2) alters B cell physiology and function.
Specifically, low pO2 led to reduced proliferation, increased B cell death and impaired AB class switching.
Hypoxia increases the stability of HIF transcription factor complexes by inhibiting the activity of HIF-destabilizing factors. This work demonstrated that hypoxia-induced sustained stabilization of HIF, led to a reduction in antigen-specific GC B cells and impaired proper humoral responses.
These findings have great implications in understanding how changes in the oxygen levels within germinal centers can alter immune responses.
The MPHI Journal Club is getting revamped!
In an effort to continue improving the education experience and comradery within the division, the students of M&I have worked hard to further improve the Microbial Pathogenesis - Host Interaction (MPHI) Journal Club. Here are the changes made:
MPHI Journal Club will meet on alternate Thursdays (see on the left) at 2pm in A5305 MCN. A schedule will be provided soon!
Following in the footsteps of the very successful Immunology Journal Club, the MPHI Journal club has now adopted a friendly faculty coordinator (Dr. Hadjifrangiskou (aka Dr. H.)). Dr. H kindly asks her colleagues to sign up for presenting at the journal club. Ideally, 3-5 faculty presenters would be greatly appreciated. Details will be provided to the brave volunteers!!
In an effort to make this as best of an experience that we can, we ask that you please take 3 minutes to complete this brief (anonymous) survey that we will then use to design the format of the MPHI journal club: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5G5CSFM
THANK YOU!!!
MPHI JC Team: Dr. H, Austin Featherstone, Lorena Harvey and Amber Beckett (president)
