The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Special Seminar Series

Speaker(s)

Rebecca Heald, Ph.D., professor, department of molecular and cell biology, University of California, Berkeley

Speaker bio(s)

Size varies widely in biology at many levels — the organism, the cells that make up the organism and the contents of the cells — but it's not understood how scaling occurs so that everything fits and functions properly. Correct organelle size is crucial for cell function, architecture and division, but the control systems that a cell uses to regulate the size of its subcellular structures are virtually unknown. Xenopus frogs offer two physiological contexts in which Dr. Heald and her colleagues are able to investigate size control of the nucleus and the mitotic spindle. First, they compare Xenopus laevis to the smaller, related species Xenopus tropicalis, which lays smaller eggs and has proportionally smaller cells throughout development. Second, they compare different stages of Xenopus laevis embryogenesis, as the ~1 millimeter diameter egg rapidly cleaves to form smaller blastomeres. A unique aspect of Dr. Heald's approach has been to prepare cytoplasmic extracts from eggs and embryos that recapitulate organelle scaling in vitro, which they can use to identify molecular differences that underlie size changes. By encapsulating Xenopus cytoplasm inside cell-like compartments of defined sizes, Dr. Heald's lab is also investigating the direct effects of cell size on subcellular structures.

 

Dr. Heald graduated from Hamilton College with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1985 and received her Ph.D. in cell biology from Harvard Medical School in 1993. Following postdoctoral research with Eric Karsenti at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997 and was promoted to full professor in 2006. Dr. Heald was named a Pew Fellow in the biomedical sciences in 1999, received the Women in Cell Biology Junior Career Recognition Award in 2005 and the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2006. She was the recipient of a Miller Professorship in 2010 and is currently the Flora Lamson Hewlett Chair of Biochemistry.

Open to

Public

Host

Tarun Kapoor

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Gloria Phipps

Phone

(212) 327-8967

Sponsor

Gloria Phipps
(212) 327-8967
phippsg@rockefeller.edu