CANCELLED: The School of Biological Sciences regrets to announce that Jonathan Gershenzon is unable to host this seminar.

Jonathan Gershenzon, Ph.D.
Director and Scientific Member
Department of Biochemistry
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

SPEAKER BIO
After studying biology as an undergraduate at the University of California in Santa Cruz, Gershenzon received his PhD in botany from the University of Texas in 1984. From 1985 until 1997 he worked as a scientist at the Institute for Biological Chemistry, Washington State University in Pullman. Since 1997 he is a Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, where he heads the Department of Biochemistry. He was appointed Honorary Professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 1999.

Gershenzon studies the biochemistry of secondary plant metabolites, their mode of action on herbivores, the regulation of secondary metabolisms in plants and the evolution of pathways. Most of the work in his department focuses on two major groups of plant defenses: glucosinolates and terpenoids.

Host: Julia Kubanek, Ph.D.

Jonathan Levine
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Princeton University

ABSTRACT
In the talk, I will illustrate the importance of basic population and community ecology for understanding and predicting how changing species interactions influence ecosystem responses to climate change. First, I will present field experiments showing how the novel competitive interactions that emerge when species shift their ranges to track warming climate, but do at different rates, strongly determine the fate of alpine plant populations in the Swiss Alps.  I will then discuss how we can predict the identity of species engaging in these novel competitive interactions in the future. To this end, I will present experiments with a model plant species suggesting that rapid evolutionary changes can influence the rate at which plant populations spread, complicating efforts to forecast species range dynamics based on their current demography. Finally, I will explore if we can predict the outcome of novel competitive interactions under climate change without having to conduct countless experiments. To do, I will use plant functional traits to predict the drivers of competition between annual plant species in California grasslands. I will conclude by arguing for the interconnected nature of basic ecological research and that motivated by the need to solve pressing environmental challenges.  

Host: Lin Jiang, Ph.D.  

The School of Biological Sciences Seminar with Saad Bhamla orginally scheduled for April 16, has been postponed. Please visit biosci.gatech.edu for further updates.

Saad Bhamla, Ph.D.
School of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT
In this talk I will share two stories about how interesting dynamics emerge when living systems aggregate and form a collective. The first story revolves around gigantic single cells protists (~5mm in length) that can contract their bodies rapidly (<5ms). I will describe our discovery of how these cells harness these ultrafast contractions to send ‘hydrodynamic trigger waves’ for communicating over long distances in cellular communities. The second story is about aquatic worm blobs that knot with their neighbours to form living entangled masses or blobs. I will describe how these soft squishy three dimensional blobs can rapidly morph their shape, move across terrains, and even solve mazes.

A Frontiers in Science Lecture by Joshua Plotkin, University of Pennsylvania

Many Americans receive their news and form political opinions through social media. But social media platforms are not shaping up to be the utopian spaces for human connection their founders once hoped. Instead, the Internet has introduced phenomena that can influence national elections and even threaten democracy. This talk will describe recent findings on "information gerrymandering” — how the structure of a social network can profoundly bias collective decisions. Evidence of these effects is found in large-scale human experiments, real-world social-media networks, and networks of legislative actions in the US Congress. These results motivate questions about policy.

About Joshua Plotkin

Joshua Plotkin is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Penn Center for Mathematical Biology.  Professor Plotkin is an applied mathematician with appointments in the Departments of Biology, Mathematics, and Computer and Information Sciences. His work leverages mathematical models of populations as a framework for understanding broad patterns of biological, cultural, and social evolution. 

About Frontiers in Science Lectures

Lectures in this series are intended to inform, engage, and inspire students, faculty, staff, and the public on developments, breakthroughs, and topics of general interest in the sciences and mathematics. Lecturers tailor their talks for nonexpert audiences.

Isabella Farhy-Tselnicker, Ph.D
Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

ABSTRACT
Correct establishment of neuronal synapses during development is crucial for proper brain function. Synaptic deficits have been linked to neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, however, the underlying cellular mechanisms are still poorly understood. Astrocytes, a major type of glial cells, play a key role in synaptogenesis by secreting factors that regulate multiple aspects of synapse formation and function. To find novel treatment avenues, it is critical to identify the mechanisms of astrocyte-neuron communication that regulate synapse formation under normal and pathological conditions.

In this talk I describe my recently published findings, identifying the mechanism by which the astrocyte secreted factor, Glypican 4, induces formation of active synapses. I further describe my ongoing work investigating the regulation of astrocyte derived synapse-promoting genes expression by neuronal and astrocyte activity. My findings provide important insights into the complex interaction between astrocytes and neurons in the developing brain, and establish a framework for future studies of astrocyte roles at the synapse.

Host: Matthew Torres, Ph.D.

Joshua Plotkin, Ph.D.
Department of Biology
University of Pennsylvania

Nancy Moran, Ph.D.
Department of Integrative Biology
The University of Texas at Austin

SPEAKER BIO
Moran obtained her bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Austin and her doctoral degree from the University of Michigan. She is an evolutionary biologist whose research intersects the fields of genetics and genomics, microbiology, entomology, and ecology. Moran’s focus is on genome evolution in host-associated microorganisms, especially bacterial symbionts of insects, and on the consequences of symbiotic associations for biological diversity and ecological relationships. She has authored 200 research papers. Moran was elected as a Member of the National Academy of Science in 2004 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She was awarded the International Prize for Biology in 2010. Before coming to The University of Texas at Austin, she was Regent's Professor at the University of Arizona (1986-2010) and the William Fleming Professor of Biology at Yale University (2010-2013).

Host: Marvin Whiteley, Ph.D.

The Biological Sciences Seminar featuring Jianlong Wang, originally scheduled for March 26, 2020, has been postponed. Please visit biosci.gatech.edu for further updates.

Jianlong Wang, Ph.D.
Columbia Center for Human Development,
Columbia University Irving Medical Center

ABSTRACT
Molecular control of stem cell and developmental potencyresides in a core circuitry of master transcription factors that act in conjunction with epigenetic cofactors for activation and repression of downstream target genes. We have employedboth genomic and proteomic approaches as well as mouse models to study protein-protein interaction and protein-DNAregulatory networks that govern embryonic stem cell (ESC) pluripotency, somatic cell reprogramming, and embryogenesis. Our long-term goal isto understand how cell identity is established, maintained, and altered during mammalian (both mouse and human) developmentunder both normal and pathological conditions. In my talk, I will discussour published and unpublished work dissecting molecular mechanismsunderlying ESCpluripotency, somatic cell reprogramming, and totipotency-to-pluripotency transition during early development.

Host: Yuhong Fan