Visitor of the Week: Tingting Duan

Meet Tingting Duan of the University of Iowa. She is a postdoctoral fellow in Pamela Geyer’s lab within the Department of Biochemistry. This week, Tingting was with us at the Germ Cells virtual meeting where she presented a poster titled “Integrity of a mitotic nuclear lamina is required in germline stem cells”.

Tell us about your research.
Progeria, or the pre-maturing ageing syndrome is caused by mutations in various nuclear lamina components and is linked to defects in stem cell homeostasis. My research focusses on understanding how nuclear lamina components promote stem cell survival and regulates stem cell mitosis in Drosophila.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
I am interested in understanding mechanisms required to regulate stem cells maintenance and differentiation.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I trained to be a physician; however, during medical school, I realized that while great strikes have been made on many diseases, such as cancer and progeria, there is still a lack of deep understanding. I decided to become a scientist to understand the fundamental disease mechanism and contribute to the development of better therapy.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Producing better publications and getting ready to start my own lab.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
Satisfying my curiosity: From doing experiments and reading others’ work, learning the explanation behind every observation.    

What drew you to attend this meeting?
It is a great opportunity to learn and meet people in the community.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
The most interesting thing was the mutation in the stonewall gene seems to phenocopy the germline phenotypes of the mutant (ote) I am interested in. I think I may look more into it after the meeting and maybe look at stonewall expression in my mutant.    

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
Consider taking a couple of days off for the meeting and find a quiet place to listen to the talks because it can be difficult to become fully involved with the meeting while you are in the lab. I missed a number of the talks I wanted to hear because I decided to keep up with work and normal lab activity.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
I joined the Meet the Speakers session with Geraldine Seydoux and Rui Martinho where I had the chance to ask questions and gained insight. 

Thank you to Tingting for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Images provided by Tingting Duan

Repeat Visitor: Ethan Greenblatt

Photo provided by Ethan Greenblatt

Ethan Greenblatt of the Carnegie Institution for Science continues our 2018 Repeat Visitor series. Ethan is a postdoctoral fellow in Allan Spradling’s lab and, since 2012, has been a regular at the Germ Cells meeting at CSHL. His successive participation has enabled him to “see how projects evolve over time and what new ideas and themes come up.” This year, he again took part in Germ Cells and trained at the Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behavior course (fly course). Ethan already has plans to attend the 2020 meeting on Germ Cells so we reached out to learn more about what keeps him coming back to campus.

Tell us about your research and how you decided to make it the focus of your research?

Oocytes have an extraordinary ability to go into a “deep sleep” like arrest state for decades - human oocytes, for example, are produced during fetal development and can remain functional for up to five decades. I am interested in how oocytes control their gene expression, understanding which genes work together to keep oocytes healthy, and what eventually goes wrong that leads to age-onset infertility. The idea to study this specific question came over the course of many conversations with my advisor when I first joined this lab. This research question ties together my interests in aging and the lab’s expertise in female germ cell biology.

How did your scientific journey begin?

I was always interested in science (especially physics and astronomy) but when it came to actually doing the science, I found biology labs incredibly interesting places to be. I started my career by volunteering in the lab of the late James Dvorak at the National Institutes of Health. He taught me that there are so many fundamental questions in biology that remain unanswered and that even an individual researcher in biology can make a major advance by doing well thought-out experiments.

Ethan at one of the 2018 Germ Cells’ poster sessions.

Since 2012, you have attended three Germ Cells meetings – what is it about this particular meeting that keeps you coming back?

The CSHL Germ Cells meeting is one of the best in the field, and I have enjoyed the extremely high-quality research going on in a multitude of model organisms. I was particularly excited to get a chance to discuss our recent research findings and learn how the frontiers of germ cell biology are evolving. The field is in the good hands of many passionate and talented researchers. These meetings are also not overwhelmingly large which gives you wonderful opportunities to interact with participants. I’ve gotten the chance to meet incredibly valuable colleagues and collaborators in the future. I had a chance to talk with many experts at an early stage in my project when I presented a poster in the 2014 meeting. The feedback I received gave me inspiration, energy, and motivation to keep on pursuing the questions I posed at the meeting.

Was there something specific about the fly course that led you to apply for it in particular?

We discovered that many of the genes that keep oocytes healthy are also required for proper neural development and function. In particular, a gene called FMR1 is linked to important autism spectrum as well as reproductive disorders. The commonality may be because synapses and oocytes use similar mechanisms to control when and where genes are expressed. I wanted to get a deeper background in neuroscience so that I might one day be able to directly connect my findings of how genes - like FMR1 - work in oocytes to understand how they help neural synapses function.

Drosophila Neurobiology Class of 2018

What was your key takeaway from the fly course and what advice would you impart to those interested in this course?

My key takeaway from this course was that the Drosophila neuroscience community is incredibly welcoming and supportive and that eventually doing simple neuroscience experiments in my future lab might not be as crazy an idea as I initially thought. I would love to eventually be able to test the role of oocyte genes in synaptic plasticity and homeostasis using some of the many methods I learned from the course.

My advice would be that if you’re considering the course to do it. You will be exposed to an incredible range of ideas and techniques, high quality instructors, and the hands-on curriculum will enable you to try out experiments in the lab at CSHL that you might not even know are possible.

Now that you’ve experienced both meeting and course life at CSHL, did you pick up any differences between the two function types?

The experiences of attending a CSHL course and meeting were quite different for me. The CSHL meeting is intense in a different way: a lot of great talks and late night discussions, and an amazing opportunity to present my research to the field. The meeting had the feeling of an amazing get-together with colleagues and friends from around the world; whereas, I loved the chance to feel like a student in an unfamiliar area of science during the three-week course. I loved working late into the night trying out all of the different neuroscience techniques we were learning. Many students would stay in the lab until midnight almost every night, and the instructors and students felt like a kind of family by the end of the course. CSHL became like a home.

What did you like most about your times at CSHL?

My favorite thing about the course as well as the Germ Cells meetings were the relationships I developed. At the course, it was with instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students. Similarly, I had amazing interactions with fellow researchers in my field at the meetings.

The Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behavior course will again be offered at CSHL from June 28 to July 18, 2019; and applications are being accepted here until March 15, 2019.

Thank you to Ethan for sharing with us his experience, and we look forward to having him back at the Laboratory again. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here and here.

* Ethan received a fellowship from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to cover a portion of his course tuition. On behalf of Ethan, thank you to the Helmsley Charitable Trust for supporting and enabling scientists to attend a CSHL course where they expand their skills, knowledge, and network.

Visitor of the Week: Hayden Huggins

Meet Hayden Huggins of the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine. The fourth year Ph.D. Candidate is a member of Dr. Brett Keiper’s lab in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department. He was on campus for the 2018 Germ Cells meeting where he presented a poster entitled, “mRNA cap-binding protein IFE-3 is critical for germ cell sex-determination in C. elegans”.

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
Broadly, my research interests focus on gene regulation by modulating mRNA translation during germline development. Currently, I am working on mRNA cap-binding isoforms (eIF4E) and how they can selectively regulate subsets of mRNAs in C. elegans germline.    

How did you decide to make this the focus of your research?
Two things drew me to what I study: 1) I love watching things grow and change over time so animal development is perfect for me; I’ve always said I’m not happy unless I’m studying a phenotype. 2) How biological information is turned into form and function also greatly interests me, so what better place to study this phenomenon than protein synthesis. 

How did your scientific journey begin? 
I have always known I wanted to be involved in research science, but it wasn’t until late in my undergrad that I determined the capacity. While at the Appalachian State University, I started an undergrad research rotation in a virology lab and got bit by the research-bug pretty hard. I subsequently met my current boss, became very interested in his research direction, and now it’s hard to imagine doing anything else.          

Was there something specific about Germ Cells meeting that drew you to attend?
In a couple years, I will be looking for a postdoc position and since many of the leaders in my field attend the Germ Cells meeting at CSHL, it was the perfect opportunity to introduce myself to them and talk about my and their research interests. 

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
That there is a really strong germ cell community which spans across many developmental systems, with a lot of really exceptional scientists in each. It makes me happy with my choice to stay in this field.    

What did you pick up or learn from the meeting that you plan to apply to your work?  
In the past year we started CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in the Keiper lab, with success in tagging our favorite genes with fluorescent proteins. Seeing other researchers’ CRISPR/Cas9 projects has inspired me to do even more genome editing. It is a very powerful tool for developmental biology. I have also learned a little bit about grant writing as a postdoc from Dr. Jordan Ward (UCSC) which I think will prove to be invaluable when I start to secure funding as a postdoc.     

If someone curious in attending a future iteration of this meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
I would tell them that CSHL meetings are excellent places to meet like-minded scientists in your field. There is an abundance of networking opportunities, which are important for those interested in pursuing careers in academic research science. 

How many CSHL meetings have you attended?
This is my first one and I will absolutely be attending germ cell meetings – and potentially translation meetings – at CSHL in the future.  

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
The scenery is quite nice here, and the bar was a great place to hang out after the plenary sessions. I also enjoyed the sense of community that I got from the germ cell field.

Thank you to Hayden for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.