Think you can explain your research with just one slide and three minutes? That was the challenge of the Three Minute Thesis Online Competition from Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences — and this year, trainee Michelle Heeney took first place with her presentation: “Botanical gossip: Deciphering mobile signaling with interspecies plant...

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell researchers, including Weill Institute faculty member Adrienne Roeder, is developing HelioSkin, an aesthetically appealing solar-collection fabric that is inspired by the biological mechanisms that enable plants to bend toward the...

Brian Crane, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been appointed director of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, an interdisciplinary hub for life sciences research at Cornell. Crane brings to the institute decades of experience studying the structure, function and mechanism of the protein systems that underlie signal transduction. Crane’s appointment began on January 1, 2025. Scott Emr, the Samuel C. and Nancy M. Fleming Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, stepped down in July 2022 after serving as the institute’s director since its founding in 2008. Marcus Smolka, professor of molecular biology and genetics, served as the...

A major goal of cancer biology is to understand the mechanisms driven by somatically acquired mutations. Two distinct methodologies—one analyzing mutation clustering within protein sequences and 3D structures, the other leveraging protein-protein interaction network topology—offer complementary strengths. We present NetFlow3D, a unified, end-to-end 3D structurally-informed protein interaction network propagation framework that maps the multiscale mechanistic effects of mutations. Built upon the Human Protein Structurome, which incorporates the 3D structures of every protein and the binding interfaces of all known protein interactions, NetFlow3D integrates atomic, residue, protein and network-level information: It clusters mutations on 3D protein structures to identify driver mutations...

The stability of the genome relies on phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinase-related kinases (PIKKs) that sense DNA damage and trigger elaborate downstream signaling responses. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the Tel1 kinase (ortholog of human ATM) is activated at DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and short telomeres. Despite the well-established roles of Tel1 in the control of telomere maintenance, suppression of chromosomal rearrangements, activation of cell cycle checkpoints, and repair of DSBs, the substrates through which Tel1 controls these processes remain incompletely understood. Here we performed an in-depth phosphoproteomic screen for Tel1-dependent phosphorylation events. To achieve maximal coverage of the phosphoproteome, we developed a scaled-up approach that accommodates large amounts...

Rab GTPases act as molecular switches to regulate organelle homeostasis and membrane trafficking. Rab6 plays a central role in regulating cargo flux through the Golgi and is activated via nucleotide exchange by the Ric1-Rgp1 protein complex. Ric1-Rgp1 is conserved throughout eukaryotes but the structural and mechanistic basis for its function has not been established. Here we report the cryoEM structure of a Ric1-Rgp1‐Rab6 complex representing a key intermediate of the nucleotide exchange reaction. Ric1-Rgp1 interacts with the nucleotide-binding domain of Rab6 using an uncharacterized helical domain, which we establish as a RabGEF domain by identifying residues required for Rab6 activation. Unexpectedly, the complex uses an arrestin fold to interact with the Rab6 hypervariable domain,...

As muscles age, their cells lose the ability to regenerate and heal after injury. Cornell Engineering researchers have created the most comprehensive portrait to date of how that change, in mice, unfolds over time and across the complicated architecture of muscle tissue. “The fundamental question that drove the initial study was really a question that had perplexed the skeletal muscle biology community,” said Ben Cosgrove, associate professor in the Cornell Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the paper’s senior author. “Does the decline in regeneration seen in old muscles come from changes to the stem cells that drive the repair process themselves, or does it come from changes in the way that they are instructed by other cell...

The Weill Institute has awarded Postdoctoral researcher Si Chen the 2024 Sam and Nancy Fleming Research Fellowship. This prestigious three-year fellowship supports talented young researchers who are doing cutting-edge research in basic biomedical sciences and are planning careers in biological or medical research. “The Fleming Fellowships provide exceptional young scientists the support and freedom to pursue ambitious projects,” said Marcus Smolka, interim director of the Weill Institute and professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “The 2024 recipient is a remarkable researcher. Her proposal to measure the interplay of mechanosensing and the mechanics of plant growth is highly innovative and is a great example for how science...

A new tool, called PIONEER, harnesses the power of AI and deep machine learning models to solve and predict how human proteins might interface and interact with other proteins. The tool can greatly accelerate fundamental research, clinical precision medicine and the development of therapies or the application of existing drugs to treat all types of disorders. “What we did here is solve structures for protein machineries that actually carry out cellular functions within cells,” said co-corresponding author Haiyuan Yu, Tisch University Professor in the Department of Computational Biology and a member of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology. […] “Not only did we build this AI model, but we used it to solve all known protein interactions in human cells already,”...

Led by Dapeng Xiong, Yunguang Qiu, Junfei Zhao, Yadi Zhou, and Dongjin Lee, the Yu lab and collaborators have published an article in Nature Biotechnology that presents an ensemble deep learning framework, termed PIONEER (Protein–protein InteractiOn iNtErfacE pRediction), that predicts protein-binding partner-specific interfaces for all known protein interactions in humans, and seven other common model organisms to generate comprehensive structurally informed protein...

Bill Loftus, our Director of Operations, has been awarded a President’s Award for Employee Excellence, Thoughtful Leader Award. Read more about the President’s Awards...

Inle Bush (undergraduate student in the Han Lab) has been awarded a CAS Undergraduate Research Program grant, supporting the project: “Identification of Golgi Outpost Formation and Maturation Pathways in Drosophila melanogaster Neurons.” Congrats,...

Xander Lacrampe, a BCMB Graduate student in the Hu lab, has been awarded a Graduate School Dean’s Scholars Provost Diversity Fellowship. Congrats, Xander! Click here for more information about this...

A publication by Rebecca Z. Zawistowski (graduate student in the Crane Lab) in The Journal of Molecular Biology discusses how high pressure affects the structure of a protein called cytochrome c peroxidase (CcP). It shows that while the outer parts of the protein shrink and shift slightly under pressure, the core remains stable, protecting its key functions from...

TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) is a DNA/RNA binding protein predominantly localized in the nucleus under physiological conditions. TDP-43 proteinopathy, characterized by cytoplasmic aggregation and nuclear loss, is associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Thus it is crucial to understand the molecular mechanism regulating TDP-43 homeostasis. Here, we show that the uptake of oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) from the extracellular space induces reversible TDP-43 cytoplasmic puncta formation in both neurons and glia. ODNs facilitate the liquid-liquid phase separation of TDP-43 in vitro. Importantly, persistent accumulation of DNA in the cytoplasm leads to nuclear depletion of TDP-43 and...

Lilijana Oliver is a doctoral student in plant biology from Rush, New York. She earned her B.S. at Yale University and now studies polyploidy in plant development under the guidance of Adrienne Roeder at Cornell. What is your area of research and why is it important? My research focuses on the role of polyploidy in plant development using the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. Polyploidy occurs when a whole genome duplication event results in more than two copies of a genome per somatic cell. This may occur across every cell of an entire organism or only in specific cells. Polyploidy is widespread amongst plants, and has been linked to everything from their evolution, to stress response, to cell and organ size, and more. I aim to understand the mechanisms by which polyploidy alters...

Bella and Adrienne discuss their investigation into robustness in the developing Arabidopsis...

Led by graduate student Xinchen Chen, members of the Han Lab (in collaboration with researchers at the USC) have published an article in PLOS Genetics about a new CRISPR toolkit to knock out specific genes in different types of cells in fruit fly tissues, particularly focusing on the neuromuscular junction (NMJ). Using this method, researchers from the Han lab identified important genes that help maintain the NMJ structure and regulate communication between nerve and muscle...

Organ development is a robust process, resulting in a reproducible organ size and shape across organisms. Altering the rates of cell division has been shown to not affect this robustness, as cells can compensate by changing their size and shape. However, the mechanisms that control this remain unclear. Here, Isabella Burda, Adrienne Roeder and colleagues investigate this robustness in the developing Arabidopsis thaliana sepal, the leaf-like organ that encloses the flower bud, by looking at a combination of mutants that affect cell division and cell growth rate heterogeneity. Using live imaging and cell growth tracking, the authors find that, in wild-type plants and plants with an increased or decreased number of cell divisions, the organ-scale growth pattern remains unaltered....

Dr. Adrienne Roeder was featured in the latest episode of InSDB’s “Behind The Bench” interview series, where she discusses her research into the intersection of patterning and morphogenesis in Arabidopsis development, and the value of bridging the gaps between science disciplines to foster collaborative interdisciplinary...