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

In an unexpected new finding, biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report observing that a damage-containment system in stressed bacteria can become overrun and blocked, but that this leads to cells responding by turning on very different pathways to make sure that normal growth continues.

Rilee Zeinert, a recent alumnus of the Molecular and Cell Biology Program and his advisor, professor Peter Chien, report on their recent experiments and discovery about how bacteria switch gears to respond to different stresses but still maintain normal cell functions like DNA replication in the recent issue of the Cell journal, Molecular Cell. Other contributing authors include Benjamin Tu and Hamid Baniasadi at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Read more

In the molecular-level world of ion channels – passageways through membranes that carry signals in a cell’s environment and allow it to respond – researchers have debated about the role of a small piece of the channel called a linker, says computational biophysicist Jianhan Chen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The linker communicates between the pore and its environment-sensing apparatus, and knowing its function – whether it’s inert or plays an active sensing role – has been unclear. But it might lead to a new target for drugs and treatment in conditions such as hypertension, autism, epilepsy, stroke and asthma, he adds. Now, Chen and colleagues at Washington University report in eLife that their experiments have revealed “the first direct example of how non-specific membrane interactions of a covalent linker can regulate the activation of a biological ion channel.” Read more

Congratulations to Kathy Sanidad and Alex Wells on receiving the 2020 Byron Prize for Best Dissertation! Kathy and Alex both earned PhD degrees from MCB in 2019.

While at UMass, Kathy worked in Guodong Zhang's lab, and did her dissertation project on "Environmental Risk Factors for Inflammatory Bowel Disease:  Triclosan and Other Consumer Antimicrobials." Dr. Sanidad is currently a postdoc in Melody Zeng’s lab in Weill Cornell Medicine, working on two projects focused on host-gut microbiome interactions in the context of human health and disease.

Alex worked in the Pobezinsky lab at UMass, and wrote her dissertation on "Let-7 MiRNAs Program The Fate Of CD8 T Cells." Dr. Wells is currently a postdoc in Yasmine Belkaid’s lab at NIAID/NIH, where they aim to understand the mechanisms controlling host microbe interactions at barrier sites such as the skin and the gut, two sites that represent the first portal of pathogen exposure and are major anatomical sites for development of inflammatory disorders.

Save the Date:  Alex and Kathy will be presenting about their research for an MCB seminar on Tuesday, September 22, 2020, from 4-5pm!