2015-09-01
- The Society’s highest honor, this annual award recognizes lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to the field of endocrinology. Dr. Benita Katzenellenbogen is currently the Swanlund Chaired Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, and Dr. John Katzenellenbogen is the Swanlund Chaired Professor of Chemistry. This is the first time the award has honored two scientists who...
- 2015-08-12 - As a postdoc studying chromosomal structure with David Agard and John Sedat in the late 1980s, Andrew Belmont had observed intriguing ultrastructural details in interphase nuclei. “We’d see large-scale fibers about 100 nanometers thick, and then there’d be a 10- to 30-nanometer-thick fiber looping out, which we thought might represent an active gene,” says Belmont. “However, we couldn’t rule out...
2015-08-09 - The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has selected Dr. Stephen Sligar as the winner for the Herbert A. Sober Lectureship. The award recognizes outstanding biochemical and molecular biological research, with particular emphasis on development of methods and techniques to aid in research.
2015-07-24 - Prasanth and colleagues show that BEND3 directly binds to rDNA promoter in a sequence specific manner and induces chromatin modifications leading to a transcriptionally repressive chromatin environment.
2015-07-20 - The Smith-Bolton laboratory uses genetically induced tissue damage in the Drosophila wing primordium to study how a tissue responds to damage and regenerates. A study by graduate student Keaton Schuster has identified a gene, taranis, that is essential for protecting cell fate during regeneration. The results are published in Developmental Cell.
2015-07-20 - Origin Recognition Complex Associated (ORCA) organizes heterochromatin by assembling histone H3 lysine 9 methyltransferases on chromatin.
2015-06-30 - MCB wishes to thank our inspiring alumni speaker, Dr. Tamara Helfer, for celebrating the graduation of the class of 2015 with her commencement address.
2015-06-26 - Kevin Yum graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry. Upon graduation, he received Highest Distinction and the William T. and Lynn Jackson Senior Thesis Award from the Biochemistry department for the research he completed under the guidance of faculty advisor, Dr. Auinash Kalsotra.
2015-06-25 - Amruta Bhate, a 3rd year biochemistry graduate student in the Kalsotra lab, has won the best poster award at the 2015 Annual RNA Society Meeting for her discovery of a previously unexplored function for alternative splicing in liver maturation.-
2015-06-25 - The Ceman laboratory, with lead authors Phil Kenny and Miri Kim, have shown that FMRP is able to facilitate or suppress the translation of a subset of its target mRNAs by its interaction with the RNA helicase MOV10.
2015-05-26 - The mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) integrates a variety of intra- and extra-cellular signals to control cell growth. To do so, mTORC1 is regulated, in part, by the endogenous inhibitor DEPTOR. A study led by Dr. Mee-Sup Yoon and Christina Rosenberger in the lab of Cell and Developmental Biology department head, Dr. Jie Chen, revealed that DEPTOR is rapidly and temporarily...
2015-05-18 - Congratulations to Stephen Sligar for his recent publication in PLoS One: “Nanoscale Synaptic Membrane Mimetic Allows Unbiased High Throughput Screen that Targets Binding Sites for Alzheimer’s-Associated Aβ Oligomers.” Using a High Throughput Screening (HTS) facility at NU, Sligar and colleagues developed a cell-free system consisting of a library of synaptic proteins individually embedded in...
2015-05-14 - Sodium ions (Na+) play diverse and important roles in biological processes, and yet few sensors with high sensitivity and selectivity for Na+ over other competing metal ions have been reported. In this study, the authors reported the first highly selective, sensitive, and efficient Na+-specific catalytic DNA and its conversion into a sensor for imaging Na+ in living cells. Their findings have...
2015-05-11 - MCB junior Nhan Huynh has earned an honorable mention in the national Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program.
2015-05-06 - The School of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Department of Microbiology congratulate Dr. Brenda A. Wilson, professor of microbiology, on her 2015 Leadership Award, which she received from the YWCA of the University of Illinois at an awards ceremony on April 23rd.