HPI division meeting: May 26, 2015 room A-5305 MCN, 3:00pm. Chalk Talk, Andy Link, PhD.
May - 2nd Friday Happy Hour -Labs hosting will be Rollins-Smith and Skaar.
Publications: A total of 10 new publications from HPI faculty have been posted on Pubmed in April. The listings and links to all publications follow below.
Congratulations to: Kyle Floyd and Matt Stier, students in the Microbiology and Immunology PhD Program, were awarded Dissertation Enhancement Grants by the Graduate School
"Expression and functions of long noncoding RNAs during human T helper cell differentiation".
Spurlock C.F. 3rd, et al., Nature Communications 2015 Apr 23;6:6932.
Mammalian genomes encode>10,000 unique long noncoding RNAs that are >200bp in length but have little translation potential, as they are riddled with stop codons.
These RNAS have multiple functions including transcriptional activation and silencing of protein-coding genes, association with proteins to affect their function, and association with mRNAs to affect their translation and thus play essential roles in arrays of cellular processes.
The function of the long non-coding RNAs in the immune system and in T lymphocytes is still not well-understood.
In this work, Spurlock et al., used whole-genome sequencing (RNA-seq) to identify long non-codingRNAs expressed in human T cells. They determined that numerous of the identified RNAs selectively expressed under TH1-, TH2- and TH17-polarizing conditions.
The authors alsoexplored the relationships between the genes encoding TH lineage-specific long non-coding RNAs and the TH lineage-specific mRNAs and.
Finally, Spurlock and colleagues defined new functions of TH lineage-specific long-non-coding RNAs: specifically, their analyses identified a cluster of antisense lncRNAs transcribed from the RAD50 locus that are co-expressed with IL4, IL5 and IL13 genes under TH2-polarizing conditions. Depletion of these lncRNAs demonstrates their critical requirement for the expression of TH2 cytokines, IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13.
Collectively, these studies identify new regulatory RNAs expressed in a TH lineage-specific manner and identify one lncRNA cluster required for the expression of genes encoding TH2 cytokines. These studies also lay the foundation for further dissection of the role of long non-coding RNAs in immune regulation.
HPI alumni...Where Are They Now?
We are always proud of our graduates and past trainees and it is always rewarding to see what they have been up to since graduation/training. We are kicking off this section of myHPI by touching bases with a former student of Dr. Eric Skaar.
Dr. Devin Stauff earned his PhD in 2009 performing analysis on the HssRS two-component system and its role in heme sensing, a project that has since sprung many interesting questions in the Skaar lab.
Since graduation, Devin completed a short (2 year) postdoc in Dr. Bonnie Bassler’s lab at Princeton (2009-2011). From there,he took a position as an Assistant Professor at Grove City College (2011-)
Devin: I’m currently an Assistant Professor of Biology at Grove City College, a small 4-year college in Grove City, Pennsylvania. In this capacity, I teach a handful of different undergraduate courses for Biology and Biochemistry majors. In addition, I run a small lab of undergraduate students. Our research is actually a continuation of what I worked on as a Graduate Student at Vanderbilt. It was too much fun to leave behind for good!
What you enjoy most about your job?
Devin: My favorite part of my job, whether it be in the classroom or in the lab, is having the opportunity to see students get really interested in the biological sciences, often for the first time. Sometimes it is helping them carry out their first successful experiment; other times it is discussing some mechanism that ‘clicks’ for them and makes sense. Along these lines, it is also fun to get to watch incoming freshmen morph into sharp, motivated students of science by the time they graduate. From there it’s fun to keep in touch with them as they go on to do interesting things after graduation. The close-knit atmosphere where the professors get to know their students well is one the things I’ve grown to appreciate about teaching at a small college.
Any advice for current M&I students: Although it may be a bit of a cliché, I’d say to find something you are good at and like doing, and don’t be afraid to go for it. Another reason I really like working at a small college is that overall it gives me more time than I’ve had in the past (especially over breaks and during the summer) for my family – four children under the age of 8. I do a lot of backpacking (including leading trips for the outdoor recreation club at my college) over breaks as well.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to muse by sending us an email (maria.hadjifrangiskou@vanderbilt.edu, helen.chomicki@vanderbilt.edu)
