Moudar Dweydari selected for prestigious Mayo Clinic fellowship
Major in Kinesiology
I’m honored and extremely thankful to have the opportunity of partaking in Mayo Clinic’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). The internship is a 10 week program on Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota. Throughout the summer, I’ll have the opportunity to learn and work alongside scientists and physicians in their research endeavors. Personally, I’ll be working with Dr. Saranya Wyles in Regenerative Sciences. I’m very excited for this opportunity and can’t wait to get started! Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of my amazing family at the Bonthuis Lab. Shoutout Paul, Daryl, Erin, Leah, Jill, and Sam!
Major Award!
Best Use of Lab Supplies
Congratulations to the Bonthuis Lab for winning the “Best Use of Lab Supplies” award for the Comparative Biosciences Halloween Decorations contest! Special thanks to Daryl Meling for anchoring the decoration team.
Bonthuis Villain Lab
On September 10th, the Bonthuis lab took all its’ villainous members to Champaign-Urbana Adventures in Time and Space. Our super-evil overlord tricked and betrayed his fellow villains and left us with only one hour and our wits to escape from the clutches of his trap and prevent our certain doom! Is no super-evil overlord to be trusted? Our logic skills were put to the test, but we escaped and saved ourselves just in the nick of time with only 6 minutes and 55 seconds to spare! Our maniacal laughter filled the air upon our triumphant escape and proved that we would live to villain another day … and enjoy doing it.
Erin O’Leary publishes
Congratulations to Erin O’Leary on her 1st author publication covering her work as a technician in Dr. Gökhan Mutlu’s lab at the University of Chicago.
This work built on their previous findings that glycine is required for collagen synthesis in myofibroblasts. This paper sought to determine the role of ATF4 in this pathway. AFT4 is a regulator of amino acid metabolism. They found that primary driver of ATF4 downstream of TGF-β is activation of the Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (mTORC1). They used a panel of mTOR inhibitors and found that Rapalink-1, which specifically targets the kinase domain of mTORC1, completely inhibited ATF4 induction and metabolic reprogramming downstream of TGF-β.
Publication
O’Leary, E. M., Tian, Y., Nigdelioglu, R., Witt, L. J., Cetin-Atalay, R., Meliton, A. Y., Woods, P. S., Kimmig, L. M., Sun, K. A., Gökalp, G. A., Mutlu, G. M., & Hamanaka, R. B. (2020). TGF-β Promotes Metabolic Reprogramming in Lung Fibroblasts via mTORC1-dependent ATF4 Activation. American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.
DOI: 10.1165/rcmb.2020-0143OC, PMID: 32668192
Preprint: Dopa decarboxylase is a genetic hub of parental control over offspring behavior
Dopa decarboxylase (Ddc) is a genetic hub of parental control over offspring behavior
Hop on over to bioRxiv to see Dr. Bonthuis’ latest paper on how Ddc, a monoaminergic regulator, is influenced by parentage and in turn effects social behavior. He found maternal and paternal Ddc alleles control distinct behavioral sequences. Additionally, Ddc exhibits dominant expression of the maternal allele in subpopulations of cells in 14 of 52 brain regions.