Well, it has been quite a while since the last post! What's the excuse then, was nothing happening in the lab? Was the lab shut down for 2016?
No of course not. Remember, science never sleeps, so we have been as busy as ever. In fact, I have been a bit too busy to post blogs over the last few months, doing all the things that a scientist does in academia. Such as? (you might ask).
Fair question. Such as: Teaching in several courses for graduate and medical school students, serving on study section for the NIH (reviewing and ranking grant applications), presenting our research in seminars here and at other schools, reviewing papers for scientific journals, serving on advisory committees for faculty, postdocs, and especially students, writing what seems like an endless number of recommendation letters (happy to do it!), and of course meeting with lab members and our collaborators to discuss experimental results and make future plans. And the great thing is, guess how much I get paid for doing all of this......drum roll......NOTHING! Sounds like a great career choice, eh?? (actually there is a very modest stipend provided for NIH service, and often times for outside seminars, but trust me, it's well below minimum wage).
BUT: this does afford the opportunity to do the things that I am paid for (and a pretty fare wage, in my opinion), namely writing and submitting grant applications to fund the research, and writing and submitting manuscripts to describe our research thereby contributing to the literature and the knowledge of mankind. And occasionally, when nobody is looking, I even get to help out on an actual experiment. So, to prove that this recent failure in blogging does not reflect a lack of productivity, let me post about three studies that were recently published, that were each made possible only by a lot of very hard work, and great collaborations with our colleagues in the field.
1) We worked with Mary Goll (Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center) and her terrifically talented student Cheng Li to report how TET proteins (cytosine hydroxylases that are able to demethylate DNA) are essential for the generation during development of hematopoietic stem cells (Cell Reports). Yahui Lan from our lab is continuing this collaboration with a focus on heart development. Mary is an expert in DNA methylation and epigenetics and we have several interesting projects in the works together. Read all about it here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124715007652
2) We worked with Amit Verma (Einstein) and Amittha Wickrema (U Chicago) to show that mutations or loss of function for the DOCK4 gene disrupts normal red blood cell differentiation and may be a key mechanism causing a group of diseases called Myelodysplastic Syndromes (PNAS). This involves work in our lab started by Thomas Quenon, when he was a visiting student from Belgium way back in the summer of 2012. Amit and Amittha are leaders in this important field, so it was a great pleasure to work with them. Read all about it here: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/46/E6359.long
3) We worked with Shuibing Chen (WCMC) and other colleagues in our Department to show that human pluripotent stem cells could be used to model defective pancreatic ductal cell function in cystic fibrosis (Stem Cell Regen Med). This was the main project for Dr. Senem Simsek, who has now moved on to a new position at Sabanci University in Turkey. Sorry but the publication link is not yet live, but I'll post it shortly.
Much more coming in 2016, as we expect multiple papers from these and other collaborations, and hopefully they will be duly blogged in a much more timely manner! Todd
No of course not. Remember, science never sleeps, so we have been as busy as ever. In fact, I have been a bit too busy to post blogs over the last few months, doing all the things that a scientist does in academia. Such as? (you might ask).
Fair question. Such as: Teaching in several courses for graduate and medical school students, serving on study section for the NIH (reviewing and ranking grant applications), presenting our research in seminars here and at other schools, reviewing papers for scientific journals, serving on advisory committees for faculty, postdocs, and especially students, writing what seems like an endless number of recommendation letters (happy to do it!), and of course meeting with lab members and our collaborators to discuss experimental results and make future plans. And the great thing is, guess how much I get paid for doing all of this......drum roll......NOTHING! Sounds like a great career choice, eh?? (actually there is a very modest stipend provided for NIH service, and often times for outside seminars, but trust me, it's well below minimum wage).
BUT: this does afford the opportunity to do the things that I am paid for (and a pretty fare wage, in my opinion), namely writing and submitting grant applications to fund the research, and writing and submitting manuscripts to describe our research thereby contributing to the literature and the knowledge of mankind. And occasionally, when nobody is looking, I even get to help out on an actual experiment. So, to prove that this recent failure in blogging does not reflect a lack of productivity, let me post about three studies that were recently published, that were each made possible only by a lot of very hard work, and great collaborations with our colleagues in the field.
1) We worked with Mary Goll (Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center) and her terrifically talented student Cheng Li to report how TET proteins (cytosine hydroxylases that are able to demethylate DNA) are essential for the generation during development of hematopoietic stem cells (Cell Reports). Yahui Lan from our lab is continuing this collaboration with a focus on heart development. Mary is an expert in DNA methylation and epigenetics and we have several interesting projects in the works together. Read all about it here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124715007652
2) We worked with Amit Verma (Einstein) and Amittha Wickrema (U Chicago) to show that mutations or loss of function for the DOCK4 gene disrupts normal red blood cell differentiation and may be a key mechanism causing a group of diseases called Myelodysplastic Syndromes (PNAS). This involves work in our lab started by Thomas Quenon, when he was a visiting student from Belgium way back in the summer of 2012. Amit and Amittha are leaders in this important field, so it was a great pleasure to work with them. Read all about it here: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/46/E6359.long
3) We worked with Shuibing Chen (WCMC) and other colleagues in our Department to show that human pluripotent stem cells could be used to model defective pancreatic ductal cell function in cystic fibrosis (Stem Cell Regen Med). This was the main project for Dr. Senem Simsek, who has now moved on to a new position at Sabanci University in Turkey. Sorry but the publication link is not yet live, but I'll post it shortly.
Much more coming in 2016, as we expect multiple papers from these and other collaborations, and hopefully they will be duly blogged in a much more timely manner! Todd
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