URAP

David Bilder - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Malignant tumors are distinct from benign growths in their ability to hijack and disrupt various processes in the body. Some common examples that most people are familiar with are tumor invasion of adjacent tissues, recruitment vasculature to accelerate growth, and dissemination of metastasizing cells. However, a less well-appreciated fact...

Yang Dan - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Sleep problems are a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and in some cases an early warning sign before movement deficits. Sleep problems in PD are diverse and can be made worse by medications that treat other PD symptoms by affecting dopamine or norepinephrine levels in the brain. While dopamine...

Hernan Garcia - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Ultimately, in the developing embryo, cells make decisions individually based on local context. Individual cells don’t have access to the morphogen concentrations across the entire embryo. They can only be affected by the concentration of proteins in neighboring nuclei, and their individual response to signaling is crucial for developmental decision...

Hernan Garcia - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Gene expression is noisy. How much of this noise is due to variations in the environment of a gene locus, and how much is due to intrinsic limitations of the transcriptional machinery? This project aims to explore these questions by measuring the transcriptional dynamics of two identical, spatially coupled reporter...

Scott Geller - Research Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

We are a campus research unit located in Barker Hall at the Northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. We support primarily on-campus molecular scientists and related professionals (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff, etc) with their DNA sequencing and analysis needs. As DNA sequencing technologies continually advance, so...

Richard Harland - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The focus of the lab is to understand development; that is, the molecular mechanisms that orchestrate how a single cell (the egg) transforms into an adult animal with a multitude of functioning organs, following a specific body plan. The first milestone in the establishment of the body plan is to...

Richard Harland - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Sleep has been shown to be crucial to animal life. Moreover, sleep deprivation during the development of the fetus leads to emotional and cognitive effects in the offspring later in life. Unfortunately, the mechanism behind these behaviors are not defined due to the technical and ethical impediments related to human...

Richard Harland - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

We will isolate DNAs encoding cytoskeletal regulators, describe their expression, and knock-out or add back functions to determine whether they are active in controlling cell behaviors. Background. Amphibian embryos have been valuable models to examine the behaviors of cells that contribute to the shape changes of the embryo. The...

Richard Harland - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Though sleep is pervasive across animals, the core function of this deeply conserved behavior remains unknown. Sleep has been hypothesized to serve many roles, from the replenishing of molecules consumed during periods of activity, to the facilitation of learning and the formation of long term memories. Recently, colleagues and I...

Lin He - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The earliest step of mammalian development from a fertilized egg to a complex organism is the preimplantation development. During this stage, a fertilized zygote develops into a 100-cell blastocyst in 3.5 days in mice (or 5–6 days in humans). In this short window, the embryo undergoes remarkable changes...

Lin He - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Transposable elements (TEs) are DNA sequences capable of “moving” (transpose) within a genome. RNA transposons (retrotransposon) use RNA intermediate and a “copy and paste” mechanism to transpose. Retrotransposons, with their “copy and paste” mechanism, have accumulated and become abundant in our genome, comprising ~38% of the human and mouse genome...

Lin He - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

In mammals, female fertility is determined by the ovarian reserve of primordial follicles and the quality of mature MII oocytes. In humans, female fertility declines significantly after 35, with a rapid reduction in ovarian reserve and a severe deterioration in oocyte competence. On one hand, the pool of primordial follicles...

Lin He - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Throughout evolution, ancient foreign nucleic acid sequences have infected and spread across the genomes of nearly all organisms. Approximately 40% of the mammalian genome originates from mobile elements known as retrotransposons, which hijack the host's cellular machinery to replicate and integrate into the host genome via RNA intermediates. In most...

Megan Martik - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The huge diversity of animal lifeforms that occupy virtually every ecological niche on our planet are all produced through the transformation of a single-celled zygote to a multicellular, fully functional organism via the processes encompassed by embryogenesis. It is through tweaks and changes to these developmental mechanisms that new...

Megan Martik - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The evolution of vertebrates is intimately linked to the advent of the neural crest, a migratory and multipotent cell population that gives rise to many defining vertebrate characteristics, such as the jaw and peripheral gangilia. Where the neural crest arise along the body axis during developmement has great impacts on...

Megan Martik - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The neural crest (NC) is a transient stem cell population that emerges during early vertebrate embryogenesis. Characterized by its migratory behavior and multipotency, the NC gives rise to diverse cell types and tissue derivatives including elements of the peripheral nervous system, the craniofacial skeleton, and the cardiovascular system. The NC...

Megan Martik - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Neural crest is an embryonic stem cell population that originates in the neural tube and migrates into the developing organs such as the heart and gut to form diverse cell types, including neurons and muscle cells. BMP signaling plays an important role in their terminal differentiation, yet how BMP target...

Craig Miller - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

A fantastic diversity in organismal form is seen in nature, yet we know little about the genetic basis of evolutionary change. We are using the head skeleton of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) as a model system to study the genetic basis of development and evolution. Sticklebacks have undergone one...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Faithful development and maintenance of cell identity requires that the expression of specific genes is turned on and off in a highly regulated manner. This epigenetic regulation requires that chromatin-modifying complexes can be dynamically recruited across the genome and activated with high spatial and temporal control. Many of these...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The large transcription coactivators TFIID and SAGA play important roles in the regulation of gene expression. Over a megadalton in size, each of these complexes contains a number of structural modules with distinct functionalities. Interestingly, they share one particular module that plays different roles and that contains a number of...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Kinesin motors drive microtubule based intracellular transport, and autoinhibition is an intrinsic regulatory mechanism that ensures this transport is activated according to cellular needs. Aberrant activation of kinesins has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., KIF1A-Associated Neurological Disorder), affecting neuronal morphology and neurotransmitter release. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Glial cells (astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia), which make up half the brain volume, play essential roles in maintaining and protecting neurons. They regulate synaptic neurotransmission, insulate the neuronal axons, maintain their extracellular environment and are involved in immune defense, thereby playing a central role in the regulation of brain function...

Carolina Reisenman - Associate Researcher, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Plants produce many toxic compounds as defense against insect herbivory. Many insects have therefore developed adaptations to counteract the negative effects of toxic compounds. Indeed, some species evolved mechanisms that allow them to use these toxic hosts as private niches, avoiding competition with other insects. In this project the student...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

During development, cells self-organize to form functioning tissues, organs, and entire organisms. This requires tightly regulated communication between cells and their environment, to ensure correct signal uptake, integration, and response. Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a major pathway by which cells take up extracellular cues and thus communicate with...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Cells integrate extracellular cues (biochemical or mechanical signals) in order to direct specific cellular and tissue wide responses. The correct functioning of organs depends on this communication between cells and their surrounding environment. However, our understanding of how external mechanical inputs, such as increased pressure, direct cell function in health...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Auditory and vestibular senses are classic and essential senses of the body. The inner ear’s development, or morphogenesis, is a complex and well-regulated process that is guided by cell communication or signaling pathways. When signaling pathways become dysregulated, it often leads to deformities and/or diseases. And in the...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Most life processes involve cells managing fluids. Our sense of hearing and balance depend on the tight regulation of inner ear fluid (endolymph) volume and pressure. Increased endolymph volume and pressure can lead to the development of deafness and balance disorders. Our previous work in zebrafish embryos has shown that...

Marta Truchado- Garcia - Project Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Despite dramatically different body architectures, animals share common signaling pathways and transcriptional networks that regulate their development, a core “genetic toolkit.” Asymmetries are essential for proper organization and function of organ systems, and we aim to examine the toolkit that underlies left-right asymmetry (LRA) in different animal groups. Genetic...

Marta Truchado- Garcia - Project Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Ctenophores (from Greek, meaning "comb-bearing") are gelatinous marine invertebrates that might be mistaken for medusae. However, they can be easily identified by their eight longitudinal 'comb rows' of ciliary bundles, which are used for locomotion. Like cnidarians, ctenophores possess multiple nerve nets; however, they exhibit several unique features that...