Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

University of Connecticut

Announces the

Oral Dissertation Defense for the Doctoral Degree

Jeffrey D. (JD) Tamucci

B.A. Spanish, University of Connecticut
M.P.H., University of Connecticut

Computational Investigation into the Membrane-Mediated Mechanism of Mitochondria-targeted Peptide Therapeutics for Mitochondrial Dysfunction

Monday, April 1, 2024

1:00 PM

BPB 201

Webex Link

Major Advisor: Dr. Eric R. May

Associate Advisor: Dr. Nathan N. Alder

Associate Advisor: Dr. Andrei T. Alexandrescu

Examiner: Dr. Victoria L. Robinson

Examiner: Dr. José A. Gascón

Link to Current Draft of Dissertation 

Sonakshi Srivastava will lead a discussion of “The collapse of cooperation during range expansion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa” by Luo et. al., 2024 Nat. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-024-01627-8.

MCB Special DEI Seminar with B. Chad Starks, PhD, BCS Associates Inc.

Be the Messenger of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Within and Beyond the University of Connecticut Community

All university community invited and welcome!

Dr. B. Chad Starks is a writer, speaker, and educator with over 20 years of experience working with universities, research institutions, and organizations to provide training on issues of social justice and equity. View Dr. Starks’ website

What Can I Do to Make Spaces Just?

In this session, Dr. Starks will introduce his “Be The Messenger” theoretical framework which examines four major constructs - Identity, Culture, Diversity, and Respect - essential to self-development, understanding bias, implicit bias, and privilege, and cultivating a deep appreciation of diversity and inclusion.

The workshop is open to all UConn STEM teaching and mentoring community including graduate students, please see website for more details and to register for the workshop

This week in Cell and Developmental Biology Journal Club, Alexandra Jablon will lead a discussion of “Characterization of a spontaneous mouse model of mild, accelerated aging via ECM degradation in emphysematous lungs” by Tanino et al., 2023.

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

University of Connecticut

Announces the

Oral Dissertation Defense for the Doctoral Degree

Yutian Feng

BS Microbiology, Miami University (Ohio)

Horizontal Gene Transfer and its role in symbiosis between genes in extreme halophilic Archaea

Thursday, April 4, 2024

2:00 PM

BPB 201

Webex Link: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/meet/yuf17006

Major Advisor: Dr. Peter Gogarten

Associate Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Klassen

Associate Advisor: Dr. Dan Gage

Examiner: Dr. Geo Santiago-Martinez

Examiner: Dr. Sarah Hird

Link to Dissertation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3n7d2XN06SVBeC4Hk5K8jC4oy6sHSwx/view?usp=sharing

Nadine Lebek, Campellone Lab

Regulation of protein aggregation and turnover in cells with impaired autophagy

Carol Vieira De Silva, Graf / Milligan-McClellan Lab

Investigating the Outer Membrane Vesicles and the Surface Layer Protein in Aeromonas veronii HM21

Join us for Fun! Networking! and Dairy Bar Ice Cream!

In the event of rain, we will meet inside ESB 121

Ice cream tickets are available at the event.

Charlotte Chen will lead a discussion of “A conserved interdomain microbial network underpins cadaver decomposition despite environmental variables” by Burcham et. al., 2024 Nat. Microbiol. 9:595-613 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01580-y.

3:35 Emily Trybulec, MCB Major Advisor: Dr. Rachel O’Neill
Argonaut: A Flexible Reads to Genome Assembly Pipeline Built for Eukaryotic
Species of Conservation Concern

3:55 Emma Beard, MCB Major Advisors: Dr. Mayu Inaba and Dr. Michael O’Neill
Investigating the Role of Bone Morphogenetic Protein Signaling in Drosophila Spermiogenesis

4:15 Rey Carten, MCB Major Advisors: Dr. Eric May and Dr. Stacey Hanlon
Exploring the Structure and Dynamics of Janus-Base Nanotubes through Multiscale Molecular Dynamics Simulations

4:35 Darren Lee, MCB Major Advisor: Dr. Sarah Hird
Identifying factors for colonization fitness in the leech digestive tract symbiont Aeromonas veronii through experimental evolution

4:55 Kayleigh O’Keefe, MCB & Sociology Major Advisor: Dr. Kat Milligan-McClellan
The effect of indirect microbe-microbe interactions on potential plastic-degrading
enzyme activity

SESSION II will be held Friday, 4/12 See details

8th Annual Distinguished Microbiologist Lecture and Microbiology Symposium

Agenda:

2:00 pm: Registration with coffee and poster setup

2:40 pm: Opening Remarks, Dr. Jonathan Klassen, UConn

2:45 pm: Dr. Adam Matson, UConn Health, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center: “Clinical Implications of Gut-resident Klebsiella in Preterm Infants”

3:15 pm: Dr. Mia Maltz, UConn: “From the playa to the air: Fungal communities and ecosystem function”

3:45 pm: Break

4:00 pm: Dr. Peter Girguis, Harvard University: “Animal, mineral, microbe: Unraveling how marine animals and microbes shape ocean geochemistry (and vice versa)”

5:00 pm: Reception with poster presentations

 REGISTER HERE!

This week in Cell and Developmental Biology Journal Club, Samantha Ceravolo will lead a discussion of “Glia fuel neurons with locally synthesized ketone bodies to sustain memory under starvation” by Silva et al., 2022.

12:25 Hayden Yuan, MCB Major Advisor: Dr. Barbara Mellone
Identifying Key Evolving Residues That Drive CID/CAL1 Incompatibility in Drosophila Species

12:45 Cappy Pugliese, MCB & EEB Major Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Klassen
Effects of Various Fungal Pathogens on Trachymyrmex septentrionalis Ants and their Fungal Cultivars

1:05 Maha Siddiqui, MCB Major Advisors: Dr. Pallavi Limaya and Dr. Thomas Abbott
Molecular Mechanisms of Sensory Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 Infection

1:25 Zachary Catania, MCB Major Advisors: Dr. Juliet Lee and Dr. Stacey Hanlon
Imaging Adhesion Protein Dynamics

1:45 Sindy Gorka, MCB Major Advisor: Dr. Leighton Core
Investigating the Timing and Function of Post-mitotic Readthrough Transcription

2:05 Taylor Orban, MCB & Sociology Major Advisor: Dr. Jelena Erceg
Chromosome Territory Dynamics in Early Drosophila Embryogenesis

2:25 Lianna Wagner, MCB Major Advisor: Dr. Ken Campellone
Maintenance of lysosomal integrity by actin nucleation factors 

2:45 Olivia Bowes, MCB Major Advisors: Dr. Jianjun Sun and Dr. Michael O’Neill
The Effects of Phosphodiesterases on Sperm Storage in Female Drosophila melanogaster

Dr. Peter Chien, Professor, Dept of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UMass Amherst

Host: Carol Teschke

Dr. Jinghui Zang
St. Jude Endowed Chair in Bioinformatics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee
UConn ’94

Co-sponsored by Dept. Molecular and Cell Biology, The Institute for Systems Genomics, and the School of Computing

Genomic Variants in Pediatric Cancer: Driver Discovery, Clinical Testing and Computational Analysis

Jinghui Zhang’s research focuses on developing and applying genomic-based approaches for improving the treatment and outcome of pediatric cancer. Her research on innovative computational methods development has greatly advanced discovery, interpretation, and visualization of somatic and germline variants. She has built a new Computational Biology Department at St Jude by recruiting and mentoring multi-disciplinary computational experts to establish innovative research programs focusing on pediatric cancer. An advocate for genomic data sharing, Zhang initiated the development of St. Jude Cloud, the world’s largest pediatric cancer data sharing platform. She received a PhD in Genetics from the University of Connecticut in 1994 for research done with the late Claire M. Berg (MCB). She continued work at the NCBI for many years, worked in industry (Glaxo Wellcome, Celera Genomics) and at the National Cancer Institute. Since 2010 she has been at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. She is an elected fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology. 

Helena Heyer-Gray, Klassen Lab

Abaecin-2 modulates interactions in a fungus-growing ant symbiosis by changing copper availability

Dr. Aoife Heaslip, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut

Host: Carol Teschke

Intracellular cargo transport in Toxoplasma gondii

The human pathogen Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) causes life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals and when infection occurs in utero. Survival and disease pathogenesis are dependent on host cell invasion, intracellular replication and egress, which results in destruction of the infected cells. In order to complete this lytic cycle, Toxoplasma must traffic proteins to three distinct secretory organelles, the micronemes, rhoptries and dense granules. In this talk I will present our recent work characterizing how actin and an unconventional myosin motor, MyoF regulate protein trafficking and vesicle transport in Toxoplasma.

Bio: Aoife Heaslip received her bachelor’s degree from University College Dublin and PhD degree from the University of Vermont under the mentorship of Dr. Gary Ward. Aoife then moved to Indiana University and worked as a postdoctoral associate with Dr. Ke Hu. She then returned to Vermont to complete a second postdoc with Dr. David Warshaw, an expert in myosin biophysics. I joined the MCB department as an assistant professor in 2017.

Heaslip website

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

University of Connecticut

Announces the

Oral Dissertation Defense for the Doctoral Degree

Lorraine Burdick

B.S. University of Connecticut

Investigating the Developmental Fate of Fibro-Adipogenic Progenitors in Mouse Models of Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

10:00 AM

BPB 131

Webex Link: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/meet/lna09001

Major Advisor: David Goldhamer

Associate Advisor: Charles Giardina

Associate Advisor: Leighton Core

Examiner: Lawrence Silbart

Examiner: Caroline Dealy

Link to Current Draft of Dissertation

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Cb4h7YolwT3UbVc4Um7_yzmNh9aMCT0zxS7b0y74Qc/edit?usp=sharing

Kaylah Samuelson, Hanlon Lab
Tyler McDermott, Mellone Lab

All Biology Undergraduate Symposium

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

University of Connecticut

Announces the

Oral Dissertation Defense for the Doctoral Degree

Corey Theodore

B.S. Curry College

Cytoskeletal Control of Autophagosome Turnover and Lysosome Integrity

Monday, April 29, 2024

1:00 PM

ESB 121

Major Advisor: Dr. Kenneth Campellone

Associate Advisor: Dr. Adam Zweifach

Associate Advisor: Dr. David Goldhamer

Examiner: Dr. Nathan Alder

Examiner: Dr. Juliet Lee

Link to Dissertation