Monthly Archives: April 2011

Recommended Readings: Peter Vogt, Ph. D.

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Friday Lecture Series

Cancer Biology Lecture

Oncogenic Signaling in the PI3K Pathway

Peter Vogt, Ph.D., professor, department of molecular and experimental medicine,

The Scripps Research Institute

April 29, 2011

3:45 p.m.-5:00 p.m. (Refreshments, 3:15 p.m., Abby Lounge)

Caspary Auditorium

Bader, A. G., S. Kang, and P. K. Vogt. 2006. Cancer-specific mutations in PIK3CA are oncogenic in vivo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, (5): 1475-1479

Bader, A. G., S. Kang, L. Zhao, and P. K. Vogt. 2005. Oncogenic PI3K deregulates transcription and translation. Nature Reviews Cancer 5, (12): 921-929

Vogt, P. K., M. Gymnopoulos, and J. R. Hart. 2009. PI 3-kinase and cancer: Changing accents. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 19, (1): 12-17

Vogt, P. K., S. Kang, M. -A Elsliger, and M. Gymnopoulos. 2007. Cancer-specific mutations in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. Trends in biochemical sciences 32, (7): 342-349

Zhao, L., and P. K. Vogt. 2008. Class I PI3K in oncogenic cellular transformation. Oncogene 27, (41): 5486-5496

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Recommended Readings: Donald W. Pfaff Ph.D. Monday May 2, 2011

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Monday Lectures

Waking Up the Brain: Generalized CNS Arousal and Sexual Arousal

Donald W. Pfaff  Ph.D.

Professor, Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior

May 2, 2011,  Caspary Auditorium,  4 p.m.

 

Recommended Readings
Weil ZM, Murakami G, Pfaff DW.  2010.   Reproductive behaviors: new developments in concepts and in molecular mechanisms Source: NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY: THE NORMAL NEUROENDOCRINE SYSTEM  Book Series: Progress in Brain Research   V181:35-41   

Garey J, Goodwillie A, Frohlich J, Morgan M, Gustafsson JA, and Smithies O., et al.,   2003.  Genetic contributions to generalized arousal of brain and behavior.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U. S. A. 100(19) :11019–11022.

Hunter R, McCarthy K, Milne T, Pfaff DW, and McEwen B.  2009.  Regulation of hippocampal H3 histone methylation by acute and chronic stress.   Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences 106 (49):20912–20917.

Gagnidze K, Weil ZM, Pfaff DW.  2010. Histone modifications proposed to regulate sexual differentiation of brain and behavior.  BIOESSAYS   32(11):932-939   

Madeira MD, Ferreira-Silva L, Paula-Barbosa MM.  2001.  Influence of sex and estrus cycle on the sexual dimorphisms of the hypothalamic ventromedial nucleus: Stereological evaluation and Golgi study
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY    432(3):329-345

Kelly SJ, Ostrowski NL, Wilson MA. 1999.  Gender differences in brain and behavior: Hormonal and neural bases. Conference Information: Meeting on Gender Differences in Brain and Behavior, JUN, 1999NANCY, FRANCE.  PHARMACOLOGY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR    64(4):655-664

McCarthy MM. Coirini H, Schuimacher M, et al.  1992.  Steroir regulation and sec-differences in [H-3] muscimol binding in hippocampus, hypothalamus and midbrain in rats.  JOURNAL OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY    4(4):393-399    Please request copy of this article from Markus Library. 

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Recommended Readings: David Baltimore, Ph.D.

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Friday Lecture Series

Translating Science into Medicine (My Retirement Gig)

David Baltimore, Ph.D., president emeritus, Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology,

California Institute of Technology

April 22, 2011

3:45 p.m.-5:00 p.m. (Refreshments, 3:15 p.m., Abby Lounge)

Caspary Auditorium

Baltimore, D. 2008. Presidential address: A global perspective on science and technology. Science 322, (5901): 544-551

Baltimore, D., M. P. Boldin, R. M. O’Connell, D. S. Rao, and K. D. Taganov. 2008. MicroRNAs: New regulators of immune cell development and function. Nature immunology 9, (8): 839-845

Klausner, R. D., A. S. Fauci, L. Corey, G. J. Nabel, H. Gayle, S. Berkley, B. F. Haynes, et al. 2003. The need for a global HIV vaccine enterprise. Science 300, (5628): 2036-2039

O’Connell, R. M., D. S. Rao, A. A. Chaudhuri, and D. Baltimore. 2010. Physiological and pathological roles for microRNAs in the immune system. Nature Reviews Immunology 10, (2): 111-122

O’Connell, R. M., K. D. Taganov, M. P. Boldin, G. Cheng, and D. Baltimore. 2007. MicroRNA-155 is induced during the macrophage inflammatory response. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, (5): 1604-1609

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New Study Raises Red Flag: Biomedical Researchers Are Citing Retracted Papers

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At a recent meeting of the Association of College and Research Libraries in Philadelphia, John Budd, a professor in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri at Columbia, shared preliminary findings on his most recent study of retracted publications in biomedical literature. It ought to put the fear of God, or the scholarly-communication equivalent of God—loss of reputation, maybe—into any researcher who has ever grabbed citations without checking them firsthand.  From 1999 to 2009  1,164 articles were retracted from biomedical journals, 55 percent because of “some type of misconduct.”  They also found 391 articles that cited retracted papers a year after the retraction. Ninety-four percent of those 391 did not mention the retractions.

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Mutation associated with loss of pain perception also causes anosmia

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New collaborative research results published in NATURE shows that Nav1.7 is not only necessary for pain sensation but is also an essential requirement for odour perception in both mice and humans.  The study creates a mouse model of congenital general anosmia and provides new strategies to explore the genetic basis of the human sense of smell.

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Anomaly at U.S. Particle Accelerator: Evidence of Higgs Boson?

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Tevatron; photo courtesy FermilabApril 8, 2011 – Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory physicists announced the discovery of a “bump” in data that, if verified, could signify the existence of a new particle or force of nature — or even be evidence of an unexpected form of the hypothetical Higgs boson particle. The finding stems from one of two experiments conducted at Fermi’s Tevatron, which collides beams of protons and antiprotons moving at energies of nearly 1 trillion electron volts. If the other experiment finds the same data bump, the result could be the most significant physics discovery in decades.

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Native New Yorker and Nobelist, Baruch Blumberg Dies at Age 85

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Baruch Blumberg, who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has died. He was attending a conference at the Ames Research Center when he suffered a heart attack.  He was 85. Blumberg won the Nobel for his work to help identify the hepatitis B virus. In the 1960s, Blumberg found a protein in the blood of Australian aboriginals who developed jaundice after receiving a blood transfusion, and he named the protein the Australia antigen — the antigen turned out to be a surface antigen of the hepatitis B virus. 

Born in New York in 1925 and a graduate of Far Rockaway High School, Dr. Blumberg attended Union College in upstate New York and Columbia medical school.   He is also well known for his work establishing the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

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Recommended Readings: Lily Jay, Ph. D. and Yuh Nung Jan, Ph. D.

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Friday Lecture Series

Thirty-six Years of Studying Ion Channels

Lily Jan, Ph.D., Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor, University of California, San Francisco;

investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Yuh Nung Jan, Ph.D., Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor, University of California, San Francisco;

investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

April 8, 2011

3:45 p.m.-5:00 p.m. (Refreshments, 3:15 p.m., Abby Lounge)

Caspary Auditorium

Grabe, M., H. Lecar, Y. N. Jan, and L. Y. Jan. 2004. A quantitative assesment of models for voltage-dependent gating of ion channels. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101, (51): 17640-17645

Lai, H. C., and L. Y. Jan. 2006. The distribution and targeting of neuronal voltage-gated ion channels. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, (7): 548-562

Haass, F. A., M. Jonikas, P. Walter, J. S. Weissman, Y. -N Jan, L. Y. Jan, and M. Schuldiner. 2007. Identification of yeast proteins necessary for cell-surface function of a potassium channel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, (46): 18079-18084

Raab-Graham, K. F., P. C. G. Haddick, Y. N. Jan, and L. Y. Jan. 2006. Activity- and mTOR-dependent suppression of Kv1.1 channel mRNA translation in dendrites. Science 314, (5796): 144-148

Schroeder, B. C., T. Cheng, Y. N. Jan, and L. Y. Jan. 2008. Expression cloning of TMEM16A as a calcium-activated chloride channel subunit. Cell 134, (6): 1019-1029

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More Genetic Basis for Alzheimer’s Risk

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A pair of papers published in Nature Genetics reports on new genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease, bringing the total number of genes associated with the disease to 10, The New York Times says. One group of researchers studied Europeans with Alzheimer’s and the other studied Americans, and both groups homed in on similar genes. The newly unearthed genes increase a person’s risk of developing the disease by about 10 percent to 15 percent — a more modest effect than that of APOE, which can raises a person’s risk by 400 percent to 1,000 percent depending on the number of copies of the gene the person has.   Read the European study.     Read the American study.

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Recommended Readings: Vanessa Ruta, Ph.D. April 11, 2011

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Monday Lecture Series

From the Periphery Through the Protocerebrum: Tracing Olfactory Circuits in the Fly Brain

  Vanessa Ruta  Ph.D.

Associate Research Scientist

Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University

April 11, 2011

4 – 5 p.m.  Caspary Auditorium

Recommended Readings:

Hampbel, S; Chung, P; McKellar, CE, et al  2011.  Drosophila Brainbow: a recombinase-based fluorescence labeling technique to subdivide neural expression patterns.  Nature Methods.  8(3):253-U102.

Ruta, V; Datta, SR; Vasconcelos, ML, et al.  2010.  A dimorphic pheromone circuit in Drosophila from sensory input to descending output.  Nature.  468:686-U106.

Imai, T; Sakano, H; Vosshall, LB.  2010.  Topographic mapping – the olfactory system.  Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology.  2(8):a001776

Touhara, K; Vosshall, LB.  2009.  Sensing odorants and pheromones with chemosensory receptors.  Annual Review of Physiology.  71:307-332.

Vosshall, LB.  2008.  Scent of a fly.  Neuron.  59(5): 685-689.

Datta, SR; Vasconcelos, ML; ruta, V. et al.  2008.  The Drosophila pheromone  cVA acticates a sexually dimorphic neural circuit.   Nature.  452(7186):473-477. 

Sachse, S; Rueckert, E; Keller, A, et al.  2007.  Activity-dependent plasticity in an olfactory circuit.   Neuron.  56(5):838-850.

Olsen, SR; Wilson, RI.  2008.  Cracking neural circuits in a tiny brain: new approaches for understanding the neural circuitry of Drosophila.   Trends in Neurosciences.  31(10):512-520

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