
Author: Sovann-Malis Loeung

We are proud to announce that Yadilette Rivera-Colon is one of nine winners of the Women of Color STEM Achievement Awards foe 2021. See the full announcement here.
Yadilette completed her PhD in the Garman Lab in 2013, and is now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Bay Path University.
Chalk Talk May 5, 2021 – CBI Trainees
“Force-responsive Materials Utilizing Cryptic Crosslinking Sites“
Adrian Lorenzana (Peyton Lab)
“Establishing Adhesive Responses of Uropathogenic E. coli to Gels with Various Stiffnesses“
Brandon Barajas (Schiffman Lab)
“Metabolic Labeling as a Discovery Tool for Cell Wall Recycling“
Rebecca Gordon (Siegrist Lab)
“Chemical labeling of Mycobacteria for growth monitoring and detection“
Kiserian Jackson (Siegrist Lab)
Please see our full dates for Fall 2020-Spring 2o21 and presenting labs here.
“Direct Cytosolic Delivery of GFP and the Awesome Power of Nuclear Fluorescence“
David Luther (Rotello Lab)
“Development of a Multiplex OmpG Biosensor“
Josh Foster (M. Chen Lab)
“Studying the conformational dynamics of Abl kinase in real time with a nanopore tweezer“
Fanjun Li (M. Chen Lab)
Please see our full dates for Fall 2020-Spring 2o21 and presenting labs here.
“Polyprenol biosynthesis in the maintenance and regulation of mycobacterial membrane domain“
Student Speaker -Malavika Prithviraj (Yasu Lab )
“Understanding the selectivity of the UGGTs, key quality control sensors and gatekeepers of the mammalian secretory pathway“
Student Speaker – Kevin Guay (Hebert Lab)
“The identification and characterization of a putative ER adapter protein TTC17“
Student Speaker – Nathan Canniff (Hebert Lab)
Please see our full dates for Fall 2020-Spring 2021 and presenting labs here.

UGGT1 and UGGT2 are key quality control factors that determine the fate of glycoproteins in the early mammalian secretory pathway. These two paralogues direct persistent molecular chaperone binding in the endoplasmic reticulum that helps with protein maturation and sorting. Persistent chaperone binding of terminally misfolded clients can target proteins for degradation by the proteasome, as well as lysosomal proteases. In our study, a quantitative glycoproteomics strategy was developed to identify cellular clients of UGGT1 and UGGT2. Interestingly, UGGT1 was found to preferentially recognize large membrane glycoproteins, while UGGT2 favored the modification of smaller soluble lysosomal proteins. This study opens the door to a detailed understanding of the recognition process for these important quality control factors and identifies targets whose folding trajectories may be altered in disease states. This work, recently published in eLife, blends chemical and cell biological approaches and was a collaborative effort by three CBI students in the lab, spearheaded by lead author Ben Adams. Ben recently started a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School. – Dan Hebert
“Our work identified native substrates of an essential protein quality control process and explored it’s role in glycoproteostasis.” – Ben Adams
“Novel substrates of the glucosyltransferases UGGT1 and UGGT2 have been identified and compared to an in silico N-glycoproteome” – Nathan Canniff
“Through a quantitative mass spectrometry approach we have determined endogenous substrates for UDP-glucose:glycoprotein glucosyltransferases (UGGT) 1 & 2, showing both are functional and preferentially target different substrates requiring folding assistance from calnexin and calreticulin” – Kevin Guay
Quantitative glycoproteomics reveals cellular substrate selectivity of the ER protein quality control sensors UGGT1 and UGGT2.Adams BM, Canniff NP, Guay KP, Larsen ISB, Hebert DN. Elife. 2020 Dec 15;9:e63997. doi: 10.7554/eLife.63997.PMID: 33320095. Free PMC article

Co-first author Dougan adds, “While cavitation is often thought of as something to be avoided, we aim to use it to benefit medicine and the development of new treatments.” For example, cavitation rheology can be used to measure the strength of interfaces within the brain, which is difficult to achieve with any other method, she notes. Specifically for TBI, the authors outline techniques for biologists to establish cavitation rheology as a tool for characterizing mechanical responses of soft biological tissues.
Read more from the press release by Al Crosby, Professor of PSE

Barney, C. W., Dougan, C. E., Mcleod, K. R., Kazemi-moridani, A., & Zheng, Y. (2020). Cavitation in soft matter. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(17), 9157–9165.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920168117
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9157


CBI Trainee Weiyue Xin (Santore Lab) took third place in the Annual G.R.A.S.S. (Graduate Research Student Symposium) for her seminar on the interactions between solid domains in biomimetic membranes. Weiyue’s work is part of a larger DOE-sponsored collaboration between the Santore and Grason groups, aiming to understand new mechanisms occurring in membranes made from biomolecules, and how these interactions can be exploited in the creation of new materials.
“Investigating E. coli CheA Activation by Chemoreceptors using Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry”
Student Speaker – Thomas Tran (Thompson Lab)
“DNA-Mediated Assembly of Functional Chemoreceptors: Using Structural DNA Nanotechnology to Advance Biophysical Research” Student Speaker – Tiernan Kenneday (Thompson Lab)
“Membrane Protein Structure and Binding Interactions Studied by Mass Spectrometry” Student Speaker – Xiao Pan (Vachet Lab)
Please see our full dates for Fall 2020-Spring 2021 and presenting labs here.
“Estimating Subclonal Populations from Structured DNA Sequencing Data“
Student Speaker – Shai He (Flaherty Lab)
“Antibody – Nanoparticle Conjugates for Targeted Delivery of Chemotherapeutics“
Student Speaker – Khushboo Singh (Thayumanavan Lab)
“A Cryptic Site on the Proteasome-Associated Deubiquitinase UCH37/UCHL5 is Required for Chain Editing and Degradation“
Student Speaker – Jiale Du (Strieter Lab)
“Real-time Monitoring of Transient Lipid-Lipid Interactions in Live Cell Membranes using a DNA Prob“
Student Speaker – Yousef Bagheri Zarringhabae (You Lab)
“Multiplex Imaging in Living Cells with Fluorogenic RNAs“
Student Speaker – Ru Zheng (You Lab)
“Studying allosteric sites on caspase-6 to aid the development of substrate-specific inhibitors“
Student Speaker: Irina Sagarbarria and Andrew J. Smith (Hardy Lab)
“Investigating alpha-synuclein aggregation using novel models of strain competition“
Student Speaker: Sarah Holec (Woerman Lab)