Saman Nayyab was appointed as a 2020 Research Fellow by the Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI), a private non-profit foundation whose objective is to advocate for and promote the development of reversible non-hormonal male contraception. MCI Fellows will each receive $100,000 over the next two years to support their research. The support provided to MCI Fellows allows them to focus on the research, publish data, and build the background they need to sustain a long career as an investigator. 

Saman is a PhD candidate in Dr. Pablo Visconti’s lab studying the role of testis specific serine kinases (TSSKs) on male fertility. TSSKs are kinases present in both germ cells and mature sperm, leading to the hypothesis that they are essential for sperm differentiation and maturation. This MCI fellowship allows Saman to learn advanced instrumental techniques and develop impressive collaborations to target TSSKs as novel male contraceptives. Congratulations on this prestigious award, Saman! Read more

One of the new realities in biomedical research is that it’s increasingly difficult to use a general approach to score advances. Now, investigations into disease mechanisms, for example, are often conducted at the molecular level by specialists who dedicate years to interrogating a single protein or signaling pathway.

One such scientist is biochemist Margaret Stratton at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose lab reports how they used advanced sequencing technology to clear up uncertainty and determine all variants of a single protein/enzyme known as calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center.

Stratton and first authors Roman Sloutsky and Noelle Dziedzic, with others, report in Science Signaling that they found an unexpected new role for the hub domain, or organizational center of the CaMKII molecular complex. Stratton says, “In addition to this known role, we show that this domain affects how sensitive CaMKII is to calcium; it acts like a tuner for sensitivity. This was a surprise. It opens a whole new area for investigation. We also show evidence for how we think it works at the molecular level.” Read more

Monday, August 24, 2020
10:00 AM
Zoom link:  Please contact mcb@mcb.umass.edu to be included on the email list for this announcement
Dissertation Title:  "A Potential Pharmacological Chaperone for Human Lysosomal Neuraminidase 1"
Advisor:  Scott Garman

Evolutionary biologist Ana Caicedo, associate professor of biology, has received an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award to support her collaboration with Detlef Weigel, head of the molecular biology department and executive director of the Max Plank Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. Caicedo spent the recent spring semester there as a guest researcher while on sabbatical.

She studies how plants adapt to new environments such as those created by agriculture. Her research focuses on the domestication of crops – a recent study traced the evolution of tomatoes – and the evolution of agricultural weeds, such as weedy rice.

She says of the honor, “I’m delighted at being given this opportunity to work with collaborators in Germany. This award is particularly meaningful to me, given that many of Humboldt’s insights came from his explorations of South America, which is where I grew up.” Read more