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Force triggers gene expression by stretching chromatin
Professors Ning Wang and Andrew Belmont led a team that found the pathway by which physical forces drive gene expression in cells.
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Graduate student Harini Iyer publishes two studies characterizing genes required for proper spermatogonial stem cell development.
In a study published in PLoS Genetics, graduate student Harini Iyer and colleagues show that the transcription factor Nuclear Factor Y-B (NF-YB) is required for SSC proliferation in planarians as well as in Schistosoma mansoni, a parasitic flatworm related to the free-living planarian and a...
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Martha Gillette and collaborators receive two grants to study the brain
Gillette, professor of cell and developmental biology, and colleagues will collaborate on various projects involving innovative single cell analysis in brain and the creation of biological machines in hopes of creating new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.
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University of Illinois awarded $8M from NIH to study nuclear structure
Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Principal Investigator Andrew Belmont from the University of Illinois heads a team of Investigators that has been awarded an $8M grant over five years to study nuclear structure from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund as part of the...
Andrew Belmont: Influencing a generation of chromatin biology
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...
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An elegant study led by Sumanprava Giri, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Supriya Prasanth, shows ORCA interacts with multiple repressive H3K9 lysine methyltransferases (KMTs), namely G9a/GLP and Suv39H1.
Origin Recognition Complex Associated (ORCA) organizes heterochromatin by assembling histone H3 lysine 9 methyltransferases on chromatin.
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Dr. Supriya Prasanth's lab identifies a BEN domain-containing protein as a novel transcriptional repressor of rRNA genes, in PNAS.
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.
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Taranis protects regenerating tissue from fate changes Induced by the wound response in Drosophila
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....
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Ceman lab in Cell Reports: How FMRP interacts with RNA helicase MOV10 to regulate translation
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.
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The Lipid Second Messenger Phosphatidic Acid Frees mTORC1 from Inhibition by DEPTOR
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...