Speaker: Dr. Didier Stainier, Professor, Biochemistry and Biophysics
Affliation: University of California at San Francisco
Title of Seminar: "Developmental Plasticity and Regeneration during Vertebrate Organogenesis"
Date: Tuesday April 8, 2008
Location: 1414 Molecular Biology
Time: 4:10 p.m.
Refreshments: 3:45 p.m. in the Atrium of the Molecular Biology Building
Website of Speaker
Research: Our research focuses on the formation of vertebrate organs, specifically the heart, blood
vessels, liver, pancreas and gut. Questions of interest include cell differentiation, tissue morphogenesis
and organ function. We address these questions in the zebrafish, a model system particularly amenable to
embryological and genetic studies. We first identify genes critical for these processes, usually by forward
genetics, and then proceed to investigate cell biological and biochemical mechanisms. Ultimately, we would like
to understand developmental processes at the single cell level, both in terms of cell differentiation, cell
behavior (e.g. cell migration) and intrinsic cellular properties (e.g. cell polarization).
ISU Contact: Jeff Essner, Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, jessner@iastate.edu
Speaker: Dr. Abby Dernburg, Associate Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology
Affliation: Life Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
UC Berkeley
Title of Seminar: "Meiotic Chromosome Choreography in C. elegans"
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Location: 1414 Molecular Biology
Time: 4:10 p.m.
Refreshments: 3:45 p.m. in the Atrium of the Molecular Biology Building
Website of Speaker
Research: "For genetic information to be transmitted from parent to progeny through sexual reproduction, chromosomes must undergo a special division process called meiosis. Errors in this process lead to aneuploidy and are a major cause of human birth defects such as Down syndrome. We are investigating how chromosomes are reorganized during this unique cell cycle by combining high-resolution imaging of chromosomes in situ and in vivo with the molecular genetic advantages of C. elegans. A fundamental goal of our work is to understand how specific DNA sequences confer not only gene expression patterns but also the large-scale 3-dimensional organization of the genome."
ISU Contact: Jo Anne Powell-Coffman, Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, japc@iastate.edu
Speaker: Craig Pikaard, Professor of Biology
Affliation: Washington University in St. Louis
Title of Seminar: "RNA Polymerase IV, the nuclear siRNA pathway, and large-scale gene silencing in Arabidopsis"
Date: April 29
Location: 1414 Molecular Biology
Time: 4:10 p.m.
Refreshments: 3:45 p.m. in the Atrium of the Molecular Biology Building
Website of Speaker
Research: "We study the ways genes are activated and repressed, using techniques of genetics, biochemistry
and molecular biology. Our current research projects are focused on the roles that chromatin proteins and small
interfering RNAs (siRNAs) play in epigenetic phenomena. Our favorite epigenetic phenomenon is nucleolar
dominance, which occurs in genetic hybrids and describes the transcription (by RNA polymerase I) of
ribosomal RNA genes inherited from only one of the progenitors due to the selective silencing of the other
parental set of rRNA genes."
ISU Contact: Yanhai Yan, Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, yin@iastate.edu
Sponsors: Interdepartmental Genetics; Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology; Plant Sciences Institute; F. Wendell Miller Lectures; Center for Integrated Animal Genomics; ISU Graduate College; and Center for Plant Genomics.