In her second and third videos, Iwasa provides an overview of the animation process. She shows different software that can be used to create molecular models (e.g. UCSF chimera), and illustrates the process of creating an animation and finalizing the video using software like Maya and Adobe After Effects. These videos will familiarize you with… Continue Reading
iBiology Podcasts
Janet Iwasa Part 2: Animating Molecular Biology, Part I
In her second and third videos, Iwasa provides an overview of the animation process. She shows different software that can be used to create molecular models (e.g. UCSF chimera), and illustrates the process of creating an animation and finalizing the video using software like Maya and Adobe After Effects. These videos will familiarize you with… Continue Reading
Janet Iwasa Part 1: Introduction to Visual Communication in Biology
Scientists commonly use visual representation of data to show their results and ideas. In this seminar, Dr. Janet Iwasa provides an introduction to the field of molecular animation, and walks us through the process of using visualization tools to communicate scientific information. In her first video, Iwasa summarizes the common types of visualizations used in… Continue Reading
Meselson and Stahl experiment
Matt Meselson and Frank Stahl were in their mid-20s when they performed what is now recognized as one of the most beautiful experiments in modern biology. In this short film, Matt and Frank share how they devised the groundbreaking experiment that proved semiconservative DNA replication, what it was like to see the results for the… Continue Reading
Julie Huber Part 3: Combining Stable Isotopes and Sequencing to Understand Subseafloor Life
In her third talk, Dr. Huber describes how a method known as RNA stable isotope probing (SIP) was used to characterize the metabolically active autotrophic microbes at an underwater vent at Axial Seamount. Dr. Huber’s group found that temperature influences the metabolic pathways, including the carbon fixation pathways, used by different organisms collected at the… Continue Reading
Julie Huber Part 2: Subseafloor Life at Axial Seamount
In her second talk, Dr. Huber describes her research, which integrates microbiology, molecular biology, and ocean sciences approaches to characterize the microbial ecosystem below Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon. Dr. Huber outlines how her group used environmental DNA and RNA sequencing techniques to analyze the crustal fluids (mix of ocean… Continue Reading
Julie Huber Part 1: Microbes, Fluids, and Rocks
A mile or more below the surface of the ocean, microbes dominate the deep sea life. In this seminar, Dr. Julie Huber describes her research to better understand the microbial ecosystem in the rocky crust below the ocean floor. She begins the series by describing how reactions between seawater and the elements in ocean rocks… Continue Reading
Woody Hastings Part 2: The Origin of Luciferases and Bioluminescence
Hastings hypothesizes that luciferases, and thus bioluminescence, evolved as a mechanism to protect bacteria from oxidative damage as the Earth’s atmosphere became oxygenated 2.5 billion years ago. Continue Reading
Woody Hastings Part 1: Autoinduction: The Discovery of Quorum Sensing in Bacteria
In the late 1960s, Hastings was studying bioluminescence in the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri. He and his post-doc, Kenneth Nealson, discovered that bacteria could communicate by secreting a small peptide. This allowed V. fischeri to sense the concentration of their fellow bacteria and, when the density reached a critical level, turn on bioluminescence. Hastings named… Continue Reading
Uri Hasson Part 2: Storytelling and Memories: How the Act of Storytelling Shapes our Minds
In his second part, Hasson explores how the ability of the storyteller to be coupled to and shape the neural responses of listeners is used as a tool to share memories across brains. Furthermore, the studies reveal the tight connections between remembering and imagining and expose the ways by which the storyteller’s perspective shape the… Continue Reading
Uri Hasson Part 1: How we communicate information across brains
How does your brain change with each story that you hear? How can storytelling shape your memories? In this talk, Dr. Uri Hasson explores how brain activity is shared between listeners of the same story, and how those shared neural responses are coupled to and shaped by the neural activity in the storyteller’s brain. In… Continue Reading
Leland Hartwell: Discovering the Cell Cycle Regulators
Dr. Leland Hartwell started his scientific career studying a fundamental question in biology: how do cells know that they have everything they need in order to divide. By studying the morphology of temperature sensitive mutants in yeast, Hartwell identified many of the key regulators of the cell cycle. In this conversation, Hartwell talks to Dr…. Continue Reading
James Haber Part 2: Molecular Mechanisms of Repairing a Broken Chromosome
In his second talk, Haber explains in greater detail the molecular steps that take place during the repair of a DNA double strand break. It turns out that the process of mating type switching in S. cerevisiae requires site-specific cutting and repair of a yeast chromosome and this is an excellent model for studying DNA… Continue Reading
James Haber Part 1: Broken Chromosome Repair by Homologous Recombination
Dr. Haber begins his talk by explaining that broken chromosomes frequently arise during the process of DNA replication. In healthy cells, these double strand breaks (DSBs) are repaired by homologous recombination, an orderly process that preserves the genome. If the homologous recombination machinery is impaired, DNA truncations, translocations, and deletions often occur, resulting in genome… Continue Reading
David Haas Part 2: HIV and Structural Biology
In his second presentation, Haas shares an example of how cryocrystallography has aided structure-based drug design. Continue Reading
David Haas Part 1: Cryo-cooling Protein Crystals: The First 52 Years
In his postdoctoral studies, David Haas set out to reduce radiation damage to protein crystals during X-ray crystallography. In 1970, he published a paper on his invention of macromolecular cryocrystallography – freezing crystals to extend their lifetime in the X-ray beam. The widespread use of the synchrotron beginning in the 1970s made cryo-cooling essential, and… Continue Reading
Britt Glaunsinger Part 2: KSHV: Herpesviral Nucleases Impact Cellular RNA Destruction and Synthesis
In her second talk, Glaunsinger explores gene expression control by viruses like Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV), a frequent cause of cancer in AIDS patients. KSHV stimulates degradation of mRNA by encoding a nuclease, SOX, which is able to target a broad set of mRNAs for degradation yet cleaves them at specific sites recognized by a… Continue Reading
Britt Glaunsinger Part 1: Viruses Reveal the Secrets of Biology
Dr. Britt Glaunsinger provides an overview of virology, and describes how the study of viruses has guided the understanding of many fundamental cellular processes, from gene expression to cancer. These insights arise from studying how viruses manipulate and hijack cellular machinery during infection and viral replication. Viruses can use the host machinery to their advantage,… Continue Reading
Maite Ghazaleh Bucher: Health and Disease Signatures of the Coral Microbiome
Coral reefs are a vital global ecosystem: despite comprising only 1% of the world’s oceans, they support more than 25% of marine life. In addition to supporting ocean life, coral reefs also support the survival of humans by providing habitat for fish and other seafood and protecting coastlines from erosion. Corals are complex organisms that… Continue Reading
Elaine Fuchs Part 3: Cancer: Hijacking the Wound Repair Mechanisms Used by Stem Cells
Squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) are commonly occurring, dangerous cancers that may originate from skin stem cells. By developing methods to identify the stem cells that will lead to cancer, Fuchs’ lab has been able to study how these cells differ from normal skin stem cells. They found that the gene expression profile in normal versus… Continue Reading
Elaine Fuchs Part 2: Tapping the Potential of Adult Stem Cells
In her second talk, Fuchs focuses primarily on studies of adult skin stem cells. Adult stem cells have the ability to make more stem cells and to generate the cells of a differentiated tissue. Skin stem cells can replenish the epidermis and make hair follicle cells. Skin grown in culture from just a few skin… Continue Reading
Elaine Fuchs Part 1: Skin Stem Cells: Their Biology and Promise for Regenerative Medicine
Dr. Fuchs begins her talk with a brief history of stem cells including the discovery in the 1970s that adult skin stem cells could be cultured in vitro indefinitely. This early work provided the foundation for later advances in embryonic stem cell (ESC) culture. ESCs are special because they can generate all the different tissues… Continue Reading
Winifred Frick Part 2: Follow-up Questions and Answers for Students
A horrific fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome began to cause massive mortality of small brown bats in the Northeastern United States in 2006. Dr. Frick explains that she and her colleagues used historical data from bat censuses and recent mortality data to model possible outcomes for bat populations in this region. Sadly, their data… Continue Reading
Winifred Frick Part 1: White Nose Syndrome in Bats
This talk is a supplement to the annotated primary literature paper found in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Science in the Classroom Project. A horrific fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome began to cause massive mortality of small brown bats in the Northeastern United States in 2006. Dr. Frick explains that she and… Continue Reading