Creating Community and Establishing Efficiency Leads to Recognition for Tamar Mamourian through a University True Blue Award for Service
Tamar Mamourian is the Chief Administrative Officer for the Department of Cell & Systems Biology. She is the recipient of a True Blue Award for her Service to the University.
"Tamar Mamourian excels at making people feel important and valued. She recognizes them as integral members of the University of Toronto community but more importantly, as real people with feelings, needs, wants, and desires of their own. She fosters a sense of community in all those around her and happily helps anyone who walks into her office."
"In addition to her convivial personality, she accomplishes her work with great efficiency. If you ever need anything done at CSB or in Ramsay Wright, you talk to Tamar! She manages to successfully align all University policies and personnel to get the job done in a timely and cordial manner. The Department thanks Tamar for being a listening ear and handing out help and guidance with a smile on her face!"
A True Blue Award for Lisa Matchett recognizes her exemplary work in Joint Health and Safety
Lisa Matchett is a Teaching Lab Technician in the Ramsay Wright Building who has been recognized with a True Blue Award for Innovation. The True Blue Award highlights the practices of exemplary faculty and staff who make invaluable contributions to the University every day.
Over the past 13 years, Lisa consistently strived to make Ramsay Wright a safer, healthier environment in her position as Worker Co-chair of the Joint Health & Safety Committee. Through the many changes at U of T, she has kept up-to-date with the latest protocols and legislation. She has been pro-active in scheduling committee meetings, ensuring that building inspections are completed and any deficiencies are brought to the attention of Principal Investigators. She maintained this professionalism even under the added duress of constant renovations in the building and the problems that ensue from outside contractors.
As problems arise, she has responded quickly and confidentially with staff, faculty and students. Lisa collaborates with a team who make the Ramsay Wright building a model for other JHS committees across campus.
Dr Heather McFarlane joins Cell & Systems Biology as Professor and Canada Research Chair in Plant Cell Biology
Dr Heather McFarlane has been appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology starting July 1st, 2019.
Professor McFarlane’s research aims to uncover the mechanisms by which plants sense and respond to the status of the cell wall, with the goal of modifying plant cell walls to advance sustainable agriculture, food security, and next-generation biofuels.
Her multidisciplinary approach integrates cell biology, genetics, transcriptomics and computational modeling of protein sequence evolution to produce a systems level understanding of plant cell wall biosynthesis.
Her excellence in research has led to her successfully competing for a Canada Research Chair Tier II in Plant Cell Biology.
Welcome to the Department, Professor McFarlane!
First events in stem cells becoming the specialized cells needed for organ development revealed by the Mitchell Laboratory
The Mitchell laboratory has revealed the very first step in mouse stem cells turning into the organs of the body. Precise experiments by Dhaliwal, Abatti and Mitchell expose the stability of the KLF4 protein as crucial to KLF4's ability to activate genes. These findings implicate protein stabilization as a major factor in maintaining control of the stem cell state.
While many previous studies focus on the genes that are turned on or off as stem cells become organs, this study uncovered new mechanisms that initiate differentiation, a process required for organ formation. These mechanisms cause breakdown of the transcriptional activating factor KLF4, releasing stem cells from their immature state.
KLF4 protein binds DNA along with many other proteins to form a complex that activates stem cell genes. Dr Dhaliwal's experiments reveal that KLF4 protein is extraordinarily stable, and this stability is maintained 1) by interacting with other proteins, 2) by binding DNA and 3) through stimulation by signals that prevent stem cell differentiation. When the stimulating signal is disrupted, KLF4 pulls out of the complex, moves away from the DNA and is broken down in the cytoplasm. Interfering with KLF4 protein breakdown prevents stem cells from differentiating to specialized cells, indicating that KLF4 breakdown is a critical step in beginning the process of organ formation. These findings have important implications for regenerative medicine as building new organs requires a detailed understanding of how stem cells become organs.
The insight for this set of experiments came from an unusual observation in the Mitchell laboratory. While studying enhancers - regions of the genome that act like a dimmer switch to increase or decrease the levels of a gene that are expressed - the Mitchell lab found that eliminating a switch for KLF4 decreased gene expression 17-fold, but surprisingly the levels of protein made from that gene were barely affected. In trying to get to the bottom of this unusual observation, the role of KLF4 protein stability was revealed.
Beyond its role in stem cells, KLF4 is also involved in numerous cancers. The researchers suggest the mechanisms uncovered here may shed light on its role in the development of breast cancer, squamous cell carcinoma and gastrointestinal cancer.
The data they present highlight the importance of studying both gene control and mechanisms that affect protein abundance. Furthermore, this is the first time that transcriptional activating factors have been shown function cooperatively through protein stabilizing mechanisms. These mechanisms are particularly timely to keep in mind as more and more work shifts to a focus on studying gene transcripts - even at the single cell level - since these transcriptomic techniques would not reveal mechanisms that rely on protein stability.
You can read more about these results in the paper: KLF4 protein stability regulated by interaction with pluripotency transcription factors overrides transcriptional control and on the Faculty of Arts & Science website
Professor Melody Neumann has developed Team Up!, an innovative application for use in the classroom
Cell & Systems Biology Professor Melody Neumann is a leader in technology innovation in the classroom. For the past five years, she has been developing Team Up!, an online learning tool that facilitates active learning and group work. Initially she developed this app for virtual breakout rooms in CSB201, an online course intended to provide non-science students with an understanding of basic concepts in molecular biology and genetics.
For the past two years, students in BIO130 have been taking advantage of this technology to learn about Molecular and Cell Biology, with facilitation by BIO130 Teaching Assistants. Team Up! is now in use in ten courses across different Faculties through the university’s online teaching and learning environment Quercus. Students can collaborate in Quercus groups, or spontaneously form their own groups. This provides the opportunity for peer teaching and consensus-building, while allowing misconceptions to be corrected immediately.
Professor Neumann has faced technical hurdles along the way in developing Team Up!, but the computer code is now lean enough that 1300 students taking BIO130 in Convocation Hall can be working simultaneously using institutional WiFi on any mobile device. Future refinements of the server architecture will allow the project to host additional users across all three campuses . The development of this project internally will also permit cost savings for students over similar commercial applications.
Funding for this project was supplied by Provost's Instructional Technology Innovation Fund (ITIF) with matching funds from CSB, and the Learning and Education Advancement Fund (LEAF).
You can read more about Professor Neumann's work and how it fits with teaching and learning across UofT:
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-faculty-and-staff-highlight-teaching-and-learning-projects-annual-symposium
A passion for research yields a prestigious NSERC Banting Fellowship for Dr Ebrahim Lari of the Buck lab.
Congratulations to Dr Ebrahim Lari of Professor Leslie Buck's lab, who has been awarded a prestigious NSERC Banting Fellowship, the first to be awarded to a CSB post-doctoral fellow. His research investigates the mechanism of anoxia tolerance in cells of western painted turtle .
Professor Buck explains that “In the short term, Ebi’s work is focused on discovering the cellular mechanisms that permit vertebrate cells to survive days to months without oxygen. In the long term, it has clear clinical implications for the protection of human tissue from low-oxygen damage — for example, during or following a heart attack or stroke.”
With the help of the Banting award, Dr Lari says his plan is to push his current research to another level. “Most of our research to this point has been on excitable cells like those found in the brain,” he says. “But now, we’ve also started looking at non-excitable cells and how they tolerate low levels of oxygen.”
Read more about Dr Lari's voyage to our department and his research at: https://uoft.me/LariBuckBanting
Prof. Shelley Lumba has been awarded a New Frontiers in Research Fund grant
We're very happy to announce that Prof. Shelley Lumba is one of the recipients of the inaugural Exploration Grant from the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), a new federal fund which is aimed at providing opportunities for early career researchers to conduct high-risk, high-reward interdisciplinary research.
Shelley, along with her collaborators Prof. Lewis Kay (University of Toronto) and Prof. Yuichiro Tsuchiya (Nagoya University), will be investigating the "molecular dynamics of strigolactone receptors in parasitic witchweeds." The link to the awardees is below:
Congratulations Shelley and her team, on this terrific achievement!