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Graduate Student Research Talk and Discussion *Free Food* |
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Date:
Tuesday, November 10
6:00 PM-7:30 PM
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Description:
Paul Duffin and Mike VanGompel from the Integrated Graduate Program (IGP) at Northwestern University will be coming to GVSU to talk about their research, the graduate program at Northwestern and graduate school in general.
Free food will be provided for all who attend (most likely, we will be getting pizza). All are welcome to attend.
The title of the research portion of their talk is "A surprising story of conservation in the germline: the function of Boule in mammals". The abstract for this portion of the talk can be found below:
Abstract: Reproduction is required for the survival of all animals, yet few reproductive genes have been shown to have a conserved requirement for fertility across the animal kingdom. Remarkably, the RNA binding protein BOULE appears to have maintained its conserved functional motif and spermatogenic expression from insects to humans. BOULE is the ancestral member of the DAZ (Deleted in AZoospermia) family of genes, an important family of germ cell regulators in animals. Boule mutations lead to a meiotic arrest before metaphase in Drosophila males and C. elegans females, and human BOULE can restore meiosis in the fly testis, suggesting a conserved meiotic function of mammalian BOULE. However, the physiological function of BOULE in mammals is not yet known. We generated Boule knockout mice and found it to be required only for spermatogenesis, as in the fly. Surprisingly, meiosis completed normally in the absence of Boule, but haploid spermatids failed to differentiate into mature spermatozoa. Expression of key regulators of this differentiation program was unaffected in Boule-/- mice, suggesting that Boule regulates germ cell differentiation through a novel pathway. |
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Contact Information:
Kirk Wyatt (wyattk@mail.gvsu.edu) |
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Campus:
Allendale Campus
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Location:
Manitou Hall 123 - Lecture Hall
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