|  Arpanahi A, Brinkworth M, Iles D, Krawetz SA, Paradowska A, Platts AE, Saida M, Steger K, Tedder P, Miller D. Endonuclease-sensitive regions of human spermatozoal chromatin are highly enriched in promoter and CTCF binding sequences. Genome Res. 2009 Aug;19(8):1338-49. Epub 2009 Jul 7.
CMMG Newsletter, Winter 2011
News Archive |
Upcoming Seminars Public Dissertation Defense
Jianbin Shen
Ph.D. Candidate, Laboratory of Li Li, PhD
"Identifying SM22 as a key player in arterial diseases"
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
10:00-11:00 a.m. in 2206 Scott Hall
Center Announcements
Dr. Maik Hüttemann, who is Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and
Genetics and also of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been selected to
receive a 2012 President's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr.
Hüttemann will be presented with the award at the Wayne State University
Academic Recognition Ceremony held April 26 at the McGregor
Memorial Conference Center, where he will receive a citation and a cash award of
$2,500.
Dr.
Jeffrey A. Loeb, Professor of Neurology and of Molecular Medicine and
Genetics, and Associate Director of the Center, has been selected to
receive the 2012 Charles H. Gershenson Distinguished Faculty
Fellowship. Dr. Loeb will receive the Fellowship on July 1st,
which includes a total of $13,000 in funds for the next two years. Monica Uddin, PhD, Assistant
Professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Neurosciences, has been awarded the 2012 Eli Robins, Samuel
Guze award for early career promise by the American Psychopathological
Association. More...  Our
former colleague and friend James Garbern, MD, PhD, who was Associate
Professor of Neurology and of Molecular Medicine and Genetics from 1995
through 2010, died on November 11, 2011. He was 58. In 2010, Dr.
Garbern accepted a position as Professor of Neurology at the University
of Rochester Medical Center.
Dr. Garbern is survived by his
wife Angela, and by his daughters Jessica and Stephanie. In lieu
of flowers or gifts, Dr. Garbern’s family has asked that those who are
interested send donations to the PMD Foundation in his memory, a cause so meaningful to Jim and one he worked so hard to find a cure for.
First year Molecular Biology and Genetics PhD student, Ze Zheng, placed first in the Oral Presentation's Session Three at Graduate Student Research Day held on Thursday, September 29, 2011.
Interested in becoming a genetic counselor? Join our webinar to learn more about the Wayne State University Genetic Counseling Graduate Program. Biology textbooks maintain that the main function of sex is to promote genetic diversity. But Henry Heng, Ph.D.,
associate professor in WSU's Center for Molecular Medicine and
Genetics, says that's not the case. Heng and fellow researcher Root
Gorelick, associate professor at Carleton University in Canada, propose
that although diversity may result from a combination of genes, the
primary function of sex is not about promoting diversity. Rather, it's
about keeping the genome context – an organism's complete collection of
genes arranged by chromosome composition and topology – as unchanged as
possible, thereby maintaining a species' identity. "If sex was merely
for increasing genetic diversity, it would not have evolved in the
first place," said Heng. This is because asexual reproduction – in
which only one parent is needed to procreate – leads to higher rates of
genetic diversity than sex. More
A
Wayne State University medical researcher has been awarded a $1.7
million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and
Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. Kezhong Zhang
is assistant professor of molecular medicine and genetics and of
immunology and microbiology in the School of Medicine at Wayne State.
He will use the grant to explore how molecular elements in the body
regulate the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). More
Henry H.Q. Heng, PhD, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and of Pathology, and Stephen Krawetz, PhD, Professor
of Obstetrics and Gynecology and of Molecular Medicine and Genetics
have been awarded the 2010 SOM Faculty Research Excellence Award.
They join former Center honorees Russell Finley, Jr., Alexander Gow,
Maik Huttemann, Jeffrey Loeb and Derek Wildman.
Leonard Lipovich, PhD, Assistant Professor of Molecular
Medicine and Genetics and of Neurology, has been awarded an American
Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant. Dr. Lipovich's award
was for "Long non-protein-coding RNA (IncRNA) molecules in
estrogen-responsive breast cancer." More
Monica Uddin, PhD,
joins the Center as Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine and
Genetics and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. Her research interests include characterizing genomic phenotypes
of mental illness; assessing gene-environment interactions in
psychiatric disorders; and investigating developmental differences in
the molecular contributions to mental illness.
Prior to her appointment at Wayne State University, Dr. Uddin was
Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Social Epidemiology and
Population Health at the University of Michigan.
Abdul Abou-Samra, M.D., Ph.D., Professor
of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and of Molecular
Medicine and Genetics, has been awarded the prestigious 2011 WSU Board
of Governors Faculty Recognition Award. This award is given
annually to full-time faculty who have made outstanding contributions
to scholarship and learning. More
Genetic Counseling Graduate Program announces Summer 2011 Open House. Center
Graduate Research Assistant, Shruti Bagla and Neurology Postdoctoral
Research Fellow, Fabien Dachet, PhD, both of Dr. Jeffrey Loeb's lab,
placed first in the poster presentation at the Systems Biology
Symposium held at the University of Michigan on April 4, 2011. The Mitochondrial Disease Clinic: The
Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics has partnered with the Wayne
State University School of Medicine, the Detroit Medical Center, the
Muscular Dystrophy Association and the Department of Neurology to
establish a multidisciplinary Mitochondrial Disease Clinic (MDC).
The primary goal of the MDC is to diagnose and treat patients with
dieases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a major role.
These include rare conditions, such as Leber's Hereditary Optic
Neuropathy and Kearns-Sayre Syndrome, as well as more common diseases
such as muscular dystrophies and spinocerebellar ataxias. In
addition to its clinical role, the MDC will also integrate basic
research on mitochondrial function in human disease, carried out within
the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics. Since
mitochondrial dysfunction also occurs in a number of important
conditions such as stroke and diabetes, the research component of the
MDC will be relevant to these common conditions as well. The
physicians and scientists in the MDC will thus provide a personalized
approach to patient health enhanced by a close collaboration of
clinicians and basic scientists working toward the same ends.
More information regarding the clinic can be found at http://www.dmc.org/mitomed. Recent Publications of Center Faculty Hüttemann, M., Lee, I., Malek, M.H. (2012) (-)Epicatechin
maintains endurance training adaptation in mice after 14 days of
detraining. FASEB Journal, in press
Lipovich L, Johnson R, and Lin CY. MacroRNA underdogs in a microRNA world. (invited review article) Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1799: 597-615, 2010. More.... Laing
S, Wang G, Briazova T, Zhang C, Wang A, Zheng Z, Gow A, Chen AF,
Rajagopalan S, Chen LC, Sun Q, Zhang K. Airborne particulate matter
selectively activates endoplasmic reticulum stress response in the lung
and liver tissues. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 299(4):C736-749, 2010. More.... |
