What does a cell do with its old deteriorating protein? In this story about cells and their life-vital proteins, Jeff Jorgensen takes center stage. (CornellResearch...

When the DNA in a cell breaks, the cell has two options for repairing itself: It can either chunk the two broken ends back together in a kind of quick, jury-rigged process, or it can grab another DNA molecule and use it as a proofreader to slowly copy the entire strand of DNA. Understanding why, how and when cells choose one or the other of these pathways has crucial implications for fighting cancer. Jennie Sims, the recipient of the 2019 Harry and Samuel Mann Outstanding Graduate Student Award, is making progress on all of those questions. Sims is a fifth-year graduate student in the lab of Marcus Smolka, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and...

A decade ago, Cornell University opened the doors of a pioneering new building, a home for innovative and collaborative life sciences research. The $162 million, 265,000-square-foot Weill Hall, named in recognition of Joan and Sanford ’55 Weill’s support for the life sciences, promised a new era with its open laboratory spaces, an abundance of natural light, state-of-the-art science infrastructure, a business incubator and a two-acre lower level for specialized facilities and services. When Weill Hall opened in 2009, Scott Emr, director of the Weill Institute, predicted: “The next 10 years will be an awesome period of discovery in the biomedical sciences.” A key to that prediction was the interdisciplinary collaborations that would be nurtured in the...

Assistant professors Jeremy Baskin, Song Lin and Brad Ramshaw have been named recipients of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowships, which support early-career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology and economic performance. , Click to open gallery view All three faculty members are from the College of Arts and Sciences. Baskin is a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator of the Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular...

Two female life scientists, a plant biologist and a biomedical researcher, have each received a 2019 Schwartz Research Fund for Women in the Life Sciences award. Contributed by Joan Poyner Schwartz ’65 and Ronald H. Schwartz ’65, the award will give Adrienne Roeder, associate professor in the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology and the School of Integrative Plant Science, Section of Plant Biology, and Bethany Cummings, assistant professor of biomedical sciences, $15,000 apiece to pursue bold, innovative...

Throughout our lifetimes, from fertilized egg to adult, our cells must divide many times. To do that, cells must copy our whole genome of approximately three billion base pairs every time they divide. Special proteins come together to form a molecular machinery called the replisome, which unwinds the double helix of DNA in a cell, exposing the two strands and synthesizing a new, complimentary sequence of DNA for each. “Imagine going through billions of these little ladders in just a few hours,” says Marcus B. Smolka, Molecular Biology and Genetics. “The replisome has to make a perfect copy. If it makes a mistake, mutations or chromosomal breakage result, and that is the hallmark of...

Chris Fromme, an associate professor at Cornell University in Ithica, N.Y., was awarded one of two national Faculty Mentor of the Year awards at the 25th annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring in October in Arlington, Virginia. The Institute is the nation’s largest annual gathering of underrepresented minority Ph.D. students and college faculty. Cornell doctoral student Aaron Joiner nominated Dr. Fromme for the award. In his nomination letter, Joiner wrote that Dr. Fromme is an excellent mentor who always makes him want to work harder. Joiner is supported in his doctoral studies by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Minority Ph.D....

TwitterFacebookEmail The nervous system is a complex network of neurons that coordinates the body by transmission of electrical signals. And just like the power lines that deliver electricity to homes and businesses, the nervous system sometimes needs maintenance. During early development, animals are constantly eliminating unnecessary neuronal material; the nervous systems of insects that undergo metamorphosis are altered as they transition. Physical injury in all stages of life can also cause nerve damage. In all cases, the unneeded or damaged neurites must be eliminated for the body to maintain tissue equilibrium. But what if a removal signal is erroneously sent out, and healthy neuronal material is targeted for removal? Could this lead to neurodegenerative disease? The lab...

Professor of cell biology Anthony P. Bretscher has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, along with Catherine Lord, professor of psychology in pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. One of seven newly elected members in cellular and developmental biology, microbiology and immunology, Bretscher joined the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in...

Scott D. Emr will give the 2017 Keith Porter Lecture at the 2017 ASCB|EMBO Meeting this December in Philadelphia. Emr is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and the first director of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell University. The Porter Lecture is named for Keith Porter, a pioneer in the use of electron microscopy in biology and a founder of...

A cellular biology “mystery” is closer to being solved, thanks to sleuthing in the lab of Jeremy Baskin, assistant professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular...

Cells constantly interact with each other and with the surrounding extracellular matrix through physical forces such as tension, pressure, torque, and shear stress. Over the past 50 years, biologists have increasingly come to recognize the important role biomechanics plays in the function of cellular activities such as gene expression and signaling. Here, The Scientist reports on recently developed methods – from upgraded versions of conventional tools to newer micro- and nanotechnologies – in the proliferating tool chest of cellular mechanobiology...

Assistant professors Jeremy Baskin, from the College of Arts and Sciences, and Pamela Chang, from the College of Veterinary Medicine, are among eight assistant professors across the nation to be named a Beckman Young Investigator, a prize is given to promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life...

A single gene is bringing researchers closer to understanding two devastating neurodegenerative diseases. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) are both neurodegenerative diseases that ravage the body and brain. ALS attacks nerve cells, which in turn weaken muscles until they waste away, and FTLD damages the brain’s temporal and frontal lobes, leading to a loss in brain function and, ultimately, personality and behavior deterioration. While the causes of ALS and FTLD are still a mystery, both diseases share a common linkage in the gene C9orf72. Peter Sullivan, a fifth-year doctoral student in the field of biochemistry, molecular, and cell biology, is working to better understand C9orf72 and how it functions to unravel the mystery of ALS and...

What is the process that allows plant and animal organs to produce different specialized cells from an original set of identical cells? In the case of small and giant cells found in the sepals – the leaf-like covering of petals in a bud – of flowering Arabidopsis plants, the answer is...

Tobias Döerr, assistant professor, microbiology Academic focus: bacterial growth mechanisms Academic background: M.Sc., biology, University of Hannover, 2006; Ph.D., biology, Northeastern University, 2011 Previous positions: postdoctoral research fellow, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2011-16 Last book read: “Bach: Music in the Castles of Heaven” by J.E. Gardiner In his own time: playing the guitar, spider taxonomy, comparative linguistics and learning new...

Sudeep Banjade, now a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University, won for his graduate work in Michael Rosen’s lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he studied the molecular mechanisms behind phase-separation of multivalent signaling proteins. He discovered that assembly of the adhesion receptor Nephrin and its cytoplasmic partners Nck and N-WASP leads to phase-separation in solution and on model membranes, which can activate this signaling system in a switch-like...

A volunteer program is connecting graduate students in the sciences and other fields with K-12 classrooms to teach mini-courses in Tompkins, Cayuga and Seneca county schools. The Graduate Student School Outreach Program (GRASSHOPR), which began in the mid-1990s and is supported by Cornell’s Public Service Center, is seeking student applicants to the program by this year’s Oct. 7...

An essential molecule in cells, called phosphatidic acid (PA), is at the center of a cellular biology mystery. This lipid, or fatty molecule, is a jack-of-all-trades – based on context, it can cause cells to move, divide or commit suicide. Elevated levels of PA have also been observed in many types of cancer as well as autoimmune and neurodegenerative...

Between the cracks in the sidewalk sprouts a thin, green stem with fragile white flowers. It is overlooked by the masses of people who walk past it each day. Unknown to these individuals, however, is the significance of the Arabidopsis plant within the scientific community. In her lab, Prof. Adrienne Roeder, a Nancy M. and Samuel C. Fleming Term Assistant Professor at the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, uses the Arabidopsis sepal as a model system to study the spatial and temporal development of...