Events under 'General'

The "National and International" Seminar Series, spring 2012

Stephen Albert Johnston, Center for Innovations in Medicine Biodesign, Arizona State University

"Technologies to transform healthcare"

Place: Lecture hall Betula, Bldg. 6M, NUS

Host: Anders Sjöstedt, Clinical Microbiology

UCMR Mini-Symposium

Research projects and networks at the Laboratories for Chemical Biology Umeå (LCBU) and X-ray crystallography research within UCMR research groups.
The symposium is open to everyone and no registration is required.

Place: Lilla hörsalen, KB3A9, KBC
Programme

Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Seminar Series, spring 2012

Leonor David, IPATIMUP, Medical Faculty of the University of Porto, Portugal

"Regulation of mucin glycoproteome in gastric carcinogenesis"

Place: Lecture hall KB3A9, Lilla hörsalen, KBC

Host: Thomas Borén

The "National and International" Seminar Series, spring 2012

Jürg Müller, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany

"Molecular mechanisms of the Polycom/trithorax system"

Place: Lecture hall Betula, bldg. 6M, NUS

Host: Yuri Schwartz, Molecular Biology

Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Seminar Series, spring 2012

Mark Petronczki, Cancer Research UK - London Research Institute, United Kingdom

"Closing the gap between the mitotic spindle and plasma membrane during cytokinesis"

Place: KB3A9, Lilla hörsalen, KBC

Host: Andrei Chabes

The "National and International" Seminar Series, spring 2012

Martin Welch, University of Cambridge, UK

"Metabolic regulation of type III secretion in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms and the role of type III secretion in cystic fibrosis pathology"

Place: Lecture hall "Betula", bldg. 6M, NUS area

Host: Madeleine Ramstedt, Department of Chemistry

Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Seminar Series, spring 2012

Jacques Le Pendu, INSERM, Universite de Nantes, Nantes, France

"Adaptation of Caliciviruses to histo-blood group antigens diversity and potential involvement in host-pathogens co-evolution"

Place: KB3A9, Lilla hörsalen, KBC

Host: Thomas Borén

Thesis Defence

Jonas Gripenland, Department of Molecular Biology

"Regulatory roles of two small RNAs in the human pathogen Listeria monocytogenes and Evaluation of an alternative infection model"

Place: Major Groove, bldg. 6L, NUS

Opponent: Thomas Geissmann, Associate Professor, Université de Lyon, Frankrike.

Supervisor: Jörgen Johansson, Department of Molecular Biology

KBC-Seminar

Kazuya Kikuchi, Osaka University, Graduate School of Engineering, WPI-Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka, Japan

"Design, synthesis and biological application of in vivo imaging probes with tunable chemical switches"

Place: KB3B1, Stora hörsalen, KBC

Host: Gunnar Öquist, Department of Plant Physiology

Abstract:
One of the great challenges in the post-genome era is to clarify the biological significance of intracellular molecules directly in living cells. If we can image a molecule in action, it is possible to acquire biological information, which is unavailable if we deal with cell homogenates. One possible approach is to design and synthesize chemical probes that can convert biological information to chemical output. Protein fluorescent labeling provides an attractive approach to study the localization and function of proteins in living cells. Recently, a specific pair of a protein tag and its ligand has been utilized to visualize a protein of interest (POI). In this method, a POI is fused with a protein tag and the tag is labeled with the ligand connected to a fluorescent molecule. The advantage of this protein labeling system is that a variety of fluorescent molecules are potentially available as labeling reagents, and that the protein tag is conditionally labeled with its fluorescent ligand. I have designed a protein labeling system that allows fluorophores to be linked to POI. The protein tag (BL-tag) is a mutant class A ?-lactamase (TEM-1) modified to be covalently bound to the designed specific labeling probes and the labeling probes is consisted with a ?-lactam ring (ampicillin, cephalosporin) attached to various fluorophores. A fluorogenetic labeling system can be designed using the unique property of cephalosporin, which release leaving group by subsequent reaction after opening the lactam ring. For further sophisticated application, multicolor imaging was done by adopting the colorful fluorophores.

Thesis Defence

Christina Schönherr, Department of Molecular Biology

"Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase mutation and downstream signalling"

Place: Betula, NUS-area

Opponent: Dr. Aristidis Moustakas, Docent, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala Universitet
Supervisor: Ruth Palmer

The "National and International" Seminar Series, autumn 2012

Dr. Hans Bos, Dept. Molecular Cancer Research, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Netherlands

"Rap and Integrin mediated cell adhesion"

Place: Lecture hall, Betula, NUS 6M

Hosts: Bengt Hallberg/Ruth Palmer, Molecular Biology

IceLab welcomes you to our interdisciplinary seminar series with two short presentations, coffee, and cake!

Presentations:
Benefits of cooperation and communication in bacteria by Sandeep Krishna and
Modeling intracellular regulation: Transcription factor kinetics by Andreas Grönlund
(details below).

Place:
IceLab (www.org.umu.se/icelab/english/) - located in the NA-building (Naturvetarhuset), floor 3 near the skywalk from Universum

Abstracts:
"Benefits of cooperation and communication in bacteria"
Sandeep Krishna, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India

Individual bacteria excrete many common goods, such as exoenzymes, siderophores, biofilm products and virulence factors, which can benefit the functioning and growth of not only themselves but also other individuals in their surroundings. I'll discuss how the functional form of this benefit affects the decision of whether to turn on or turn off production of the common good, and how communication between bacteria may then become crucial for making such decisions correctly.

"Modeling intracellular regulation: Transcription factor kinetics"
Andreas Grönlund, UPSC, Umeå University

Basic physical constraints in how macromolecules are made and how fast they can find each other in the intracellular environment constrain the fidelity of cellular regulation. These two properties are recently studied experimentally as well as analytically. I will give a brief overview of how such processes can be characterized and modeled.

The "National and International" Seminar Series, autumn 2012

Prof. Terje Larsen, Institute of Medical Biology, University of Tromso, Norway

"Strategies for Improving cardiac metabolism and function in obesity/type 2 diabetes"

Place: Lecture Hall Betula, bldg. 6M, NUS-area

Host: Stefan Nilsson, Medical Biosciences

Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Seminar Series, autumn 2012

Örjan Carlborg, Dept. of Clinical Sciences, Division of Computational Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

"Understanding the genetic architecture of complex traits"

Place: lecture hall KB3A9, Lilla hörsalen, KBC

Host: Andrei Chabes

Abstract
Understanding how genes contribute to the phenotypic variability observed in populations is a major challenge in biology. A common approach to dissect the genetics of complex traits is to measure the genotype of individuals in a population at a large number of loci across the genome and then evaluate whether the phenotypic mean differs between the individuals that carry particular combinations of genetic variants, alleles, at either individual loci (i.e. detection of additive, dominance and epigenetic effects of loci) or at multiple loci (i.e. to detect genetic interactions or epistasis). I will here give a brief introduction to this topic and illustrate the insights that can be gained into the genetics of complex traits using these approaches by using examples from our research in domestic animals. An alternative, and promising, strategy to identify genes involved in gene-by-gene or gene-by-environment interactions is to search for loci that causes a difference in variance (a variance heterogeneity) between genotypes. This talk will be concluded by presenting some recent work to develop theory and tools for genome-wide mapping of individual variance-controlling loci. Empirical findings from studies of data in Arabidopsis thaliana and Saccharomyces cerevisiae will be used to illustrate the contribution of such loci to the genetic architecture of complex traits and the implications of the findings on our understanding of the genetic regulation of complex trait variation.

Thesis Defence

Pramod Kumar Rompikuntal, Department of Molecular Biology

"Outer membrane vesicle-mediated export of virulence factors from Gram-negative bacteria"

Place: Astrid Fagraeus-salen (A103), bldgs. 6A-L, NUS 

Opponent: Professor Ann-Beth Jonsson, University of Stockholm

Supervisor: Sun Nyunt Wai, Department of Molecular Biology

The "National and International" Seminar Series, autumn 2012

Dr. Denise Monack, Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, California, USA

"Chronic Salmonella carriage is controlled by a host regulator of fatty acid metabolism PPARdelta"

Place: lecture hall Betula, bldg. 6M, NUS-area

Host: Anders Sjösted, Clinical Microbiology

Extra Seminar - MIMS/UCMR

Henrik Strahl, The Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, Newcastle University, UK

"From a passive envelope to a highly organized scaffold: The active role of the cell membrane in bacterial growth and division."

Place: Major Groove, bldg. 6L, NUS-area

Host: Bernt Eric Uhlin, Department of Molecular Biology

The "National and International" Seminar Series, autumn 2012

Dr. Ting Xie, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, USA
"Stern Cells: Niche, Competition, Aging and Potential Application"

Host: Leif Carlsson, Umeå Center for Molecular Medicine

AND

Dr. Francois Guillemot, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, UK
"Transcriptional controll of stern cell activity in the mouse brain"

Hosts: Tanushree Pandit/Lena Gunhaga, Umeå Center for Molecular Medicine

Place (both seminars): lecture hall Betula, bldg. 6M, NUS-area
NOTE TIME! The first seminar will start at 14.00!