Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Group

News in BMB:

Garcia Lab members Kevin Janssen, Mariel Mendoza and Yekaterina Kori presented posters, and Laura Agosto and Mariel Coradin gave talks on their research at the Human Proteome Organization Conference in Orlando, FL. Yekaterina also was awarded a travel grant as well.

Ismail Ahmed has been selected this year to participate in the Rising Stars in Biomedical hosted by MIT. Read more here

Sarah Welsh (Gardini Lab) has received the Rugart Family Award for the best predoctoral Research-in-Progress presentation. Congratulations!

Sam Wein and Richard Lauman (Garcia Lab) presented their research at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Conference in San Diego, CA.

Martin Iwanicki was awarded the NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship F31 from the NIH. Congratulations!

Mara Olenick, Sanjula Wickramasinghe, and Martin Iwanicki gave talks at the Biophysical Society Meeting in San Francisco.

Congratulations to Jamie DeNizio (Kohli Lab) and Enrique Lin-Shiao (Berger Lab) who are co-authors on a recent paper "Disruption of TET2 promotes the therapeutic efficacy of CD19-targeted T cells", published in Nature that describes a potential role for TET2 modification and disruption for improving CAR T immunotherapies. Read more here.

Ismail Ahmed received the NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award (F99/K00) Fellowship. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Yekaterina Kori on receiving the CBI fellowship appointment.

The 2018 Saul Winegrad Award for Outstanding Dissertation goes to Lucie Guo, advisor Ben Black. Congratulations!

Jeffrey Carey has been awarded the Nigel Fraser Prize by the Micro Department.

Shelley Berger, a BMB faculty
member was just elected to the National Academy (US)

Laura Agosto (Garcia/Lynch labs) and Kelly Karch (Garcia lab) presented their research work at the US Human Proteome Organization conference in Minneapolis, MN. Kevin Janssen (Garcia lab) also co-led a career workshop at that conference as well.

Congratulations to BMB students Korrie Mack (Shorter Lab) and Enrique Lin-Shiao (Berger Lab) who have been selected for this years 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The meeting will be attended by over 42 Nobel laureates and 600 young scientists across 84 different countries! #LiNo2018

Congratulations to Enrique Lin-Shiao(Berger Lab) and Mariel Coradin(Garcia Lab) who are co-authors on a recent paper "KMT2D regulates p63 target enhancers to coordinate epithelial homeostasis," published in Genes and Development that describes the role of epigenetic regulator KMT2D in coordinating epithelial enhancers to maintain epithelial progenitor gene expression and coordinate proper terminal differentiation. Read more here.

Congratulations to BMB Student, Jeffrey Carey, and BMB faculty member, Mark Goulian on their publication, Regulated stochasticity in a bacterial signaling network permits tolerance to a rapid environmental change. Cell. In press.

Joanna Slusky (BMB PhD 2007) received one of the very prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (her lab is at Univ. of Kansas). Read more here.

Jeremy Wilusz and lab members demonstrate that depletion of splicing factors increases the steady-state pool of circular RNAs. Read more.

Congratulations to author, Kenji Murakami, along with BMB students and co-authors, Enrique Lin-Shiao and Trevor van Eeuwen on their early publication in PNAS, Def1 interacts with TFIIH and modulates RNA polymerase II transcription. Click here to read more.

Ben Garcia in collaboration with the lab of Ronen Marmorstein have just published a study in Nature Communications to understand how cellular metabolism affects histone post-translational modifications through enzymatic and non-enzymatic mechanisms in an acyl-CoA dependent manner. Read more here.

Congrats to BMB student Mariel Coradin (Garcia Lab) and recent BMB graduate Robert Magin (Marmorstein Lab) who are co-authors on a recent paper "Characterization of histone acylations links chromatin modifications with metabolism", published in Nature Communications that describes how metabolism affects histone post-translational modifications through enzymatic and non-enzymatic mechanisms in an acyl-CoA dependent manner. Read more here.

Congratulations to BMB Student Kelly Karch (Garcia Lab) for her recent publication "The nucleosomal surface is the main target of histone ADP-ribosylation in response to DNA damage" in Molecular BioSystems. Read more here.

Congratulations to Mitch Lazar and recent BMB graduate Jarrett Remsberg for their Nature Communications publication "An HDAC3-PROX1 corepressor module acts on HNF4α to control hepatic triglycerides." Read more here.

Congrats to BMB Student Yekaterina Kori (Garcia Lab) on her publication "Proteome-wide acetylation dynamics in human cells" published in Scientific Reports.Read more here.

Congratulations to Alison Sweeney and BMB Student, James Townsend, on their publication: Penn Study Identifies How Squid Have Evolved to See in Dim Ocean Water.

Congratulations to Ismail Ahmed (Adv. Feng Gai) who is the recipient of the 2017 P. Leslie Dutton Award! See publication below:

Penn Chemists Discover a Fluorophore That Will Open New Doors in Optical Imaging. Read more here.

Thank you to our new BMB Student Representatives:
Year 1 Michael Cory
Year 2 Richard Lauman
Year 3 Hannah Richter
Year 4 Sravya Kotaru
Year 5 Jamie DeNizio
Year 6 Meilin Fernandez-Garcia

A high-resolution view of the structure of Hsp104 (heat shock protein 104), a natural yeast protein nanomachine with six subunits, has been acquired by Jim Shorter, and his colleagues at the University of Michigan. The team described their findings in Science this week. Read more.

Ronen Marmorstein has been appointed as the next George W. Raiziss Professor, a position vacated by the departure of Mark Lemmon.

Three Penn Medicine Scientists Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Yale E. Goldman, Mitchell Lazar and Sarah Tishkoff receive one of the highest honors for a U.S. scientist. Click here to read the article.

UPenn is ranked #7 for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology by the Center for World University Rankings. Click here for more info.

2012 BMB Graduate, Molly Sheenan, is a Candidate for the PA, 7th Congressional District, primary (2018). Read more.

Joshua E. Allen, Ph.D., 2012 BMB grad, who was selected for the "Forbes 30 Under 30" list in healthcare is now on the first-in-human trial of ONC201, the cancer drug that he discovered as a BMB graduate student, and will be published in Clinical Cancer Research. He is very excited about the results & evaluating this in several Phase II studies. Click here to see the press release.

Kristen Lynch, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, has been appointed Chair of the Biochemistry and Biophysics Dept.

BMB student Enrique Lin Shiao was awarded an NRSA (F31) award. See details here.

Enrique Lin Shiao was also awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for 2017 (Advisor: Shelley L. Berger).

Ben Garcia has been elected to the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) governing council (Western Region representative) for a three year term starting January 2017 to December 2019. Here is the link: https://www.hupo.org/Election

The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Pennsylvania a $24 Million, five-year grant to establish a Science and Technology Center (STC) focused on engineering mechanobiology to be lead by Yale E. Goldman of Physiology and Biochemistry/Biophysics, and Vivej Shenoy of SEAS. To learn more, click here.

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