Welcome to the Department of Cell & Systems Biology

The molecular biology revolution has given us the unprecedented ability to explore fundamental mechanisms that govern life. Researchers in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology work to understand these mechanisms at all levels of biological organization using a wide array of state-of-the-art molecular, genomic, proteomic, cell biological, imaging, physiological and computational tools and methods.

The CSB Forefront is a digital magazine from CSB Graduate Students. Download Volume 1 here!

- The pan-genome effector-triggered immunity landscape of a host-pathogen interaction. Laflamme B, Dillon MM, Martel A, Almeida RND, Desveaux D, Guttman DS, Science. 2020 Feb 14;367(6479):763-768. [Editor’s Summary]
- Par-1 controls the composition and growth of cortical actin caps during Drosophila embryo cleavage. Jiang T, Harris TJC, J Cell Biol. 2019 Dec 2;218(12):4195-4214.
- The Sublaterodorsal Tegmental Nucleus Functions to Couple Brain State and Motor Activity during REM Sleep and Wakefulness. Torontali ZA, Fraigne JJ, Sanghera P, Horner R, Peever J, Current Biology. 2019 Nov 18;29(22):3803-3813.e5.[UofT story on this paper]
- The Receptor Kinases BAK1/SERK4 Regulate Ca²⁺ Channel-Mediated Cellular Homeostasis for Cell Death Containment. Yu X, Xu G, Li B, de Souza Vespoli L, Liu H, Moeder W, Chen S, de Oliveira MVV, Ariádina de Souza S, Shao W, Rodrigues B, Ma Y, Chhajed S, Xue S, Berkowitz GA, Yoshioka K, He P, Shan L, Current Biology. 2019 Nov 18;29(22):3778-3790.e8.
- Apical polarity proteins recruit the RhoGEF Cysts to promote junctional myosin assembly. Silver JT, Wirtz-Peitz F, Simões S, Pellikka M, Yan D, Binari R, Nishimura T, Li Y, Harris TJC, Perrimon N, Tepass U, J Cell Biol. 2019 Oct 7;218(10):3397-3414.
- Recurrent non-coding U1-snRNA mutations drive cryptic splicing in Shh medulloblastoma. Suzuki H, Kumar SA, Shuai S, […] Calarco JA, Stein L, Taylor MD, Nature. 2019;574:707–711.
- KLF4 protein stability regulated by interaction with pluripotency transcription factors overrides transcriptional control. Dhaliwal NK, Abatti LE, Mitchell JA, Genes & Dev 2019;33(1):1-14 [CSB story on this paper] [UofT story on this paper] [National Award for this paper]
- High Temporal-Resolution Transcriptome Landscape of Early Maize Seed Development Yi F, Gu W, Chen J, Song N, Gao X, Zhang X, Zhou Y, Ma X, Song W, Zhao H, Esteban E, Pasha A, Provart NJ, Lai J, Plant Cell. 2019 May;31(5):974-992.
- A cargo model of yolk syncytial nuclear migration during zebrafish epiboly. Fei Z, Bae K, Parent SE, Wan H, Goodwin K, Theisen U, Tanentzapf G, Bruce AEE, Development. 2019 Jan 2;146(1). [Video summary of this paper]