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Cohen Lab Attends Cell Bio 2023

We had a great time at Cell Bio 2023 in Boston, MA. Sarah co-chaired a session on “Lipids in Organelle Form, Function, and Communication;” and gave a talk in the “Beyond Pretty Pictures” Subgroup, while Maria Clara, Shannon, and Sherry presented posters. A highlight was seeing Maria Clara and Sherry’s gorgeous images on the Zeiss Microscopy WOW Wall!!

Congratulations, Dr. Windham!

Today we celebrated a major milestone – the defense of the first Cohen Lab PhD student! Congratulations, Dr. Windham!!! Ian will soon move on to a postdoc position in the Alushin lab at Rockefeller. We are proud of you, best of luck!

Lab Retreat in Saxapahaw

We had a fantastic Lab Retreat in Saxapahaw! We did a Strengthsfinder activity that allowed us to learn about the shared and unique strengths of our team members. Then we had lunch at the Saxapahaw General Store and paddled on the Haw River.

Happy Halloween from the Cohen Lab!

We had so much fun dressing up as organelles for Halloween! Sherry is a microtubule; Greg is mitochondria; Maria Clara is a peroxisome; Alex is lipid droplets; Joey is a lysosome; Vickie is the Golgi; Shannon is a stress granule; Ian is a chloroplast; and Sarah is the ER! So much creativity in these costumes!

PS What do you call an elevator full of organelles? A CELL-evator!

 

Good-bye Sidney, Valerie, and Colby. We will miss you!

Today was a bitter-sweet day as we said goodbye to 3 lab members. PREP Scholar Sidney Smith will move on to a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology at U Penn, while technician Valerie Dong will pursue a PhD in Animal Science at UC Davis, and undergraduate research assistant Colby Wagner will move to a Research Associate position at local company AskBio. Good luck, we will miss you!

 

Welcome, new students!

We are thrilled to have 3 new CBP Curriculum PhD Students joining the lab: Sherry Hsu, Alex Powers, and Vickie Williams. Sherry will study the role of tubulin modifications in positioning organelles, and how this goes awry in models of ALS. Alex will study the role of Apolipoprotein E, the largest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, in regulating cellular lipid metabolism. Vickie will study the role of membrane contact site proteins in Parkinson’s disease. Welcome!

Greg’s preprint posted to bioRxiv

Greg’s preprint has been posted to bioRxiv! Taking a deep dive into the function of the lipid droplet-mitochondria contact protein perilipin 5 (PLIN5), we show that efficient trafficking of fatty acids from lipid droplets to mitochondria during starvation requires both phosphorylation of PLIN5 and the PLIN5 mitochondrial tethering domain. Read the tweetorial to learn more.