Atlanta 500 Women Scientists is hosting a film screening of the award-winning documentary film "My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life & Science of Dr. Marian Diamond" (View the trailer here).
Part biography, part scientific adventure story, and part inspirational tale, this film details a story of a female neuroscientist who lived joyously at the forefront of scientific exploration and education, finding and sharing fact-based good news about the brain.
The screening will be followed by a discussion featuring two local faculty in neuroscience, Marise Parent (Professor & Associate Director of the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University) and Audrey Duarte (Associate Professor in Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology). They will discuss Dr. Diamond's impact on the field, as well as the science of learning, memory, and neuroplasticity.
This screening is a fundraiser for our 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, 500 Women Scientists. They suggest a donation of $10-15, which will directly benefit outreach events hosted by the Atlanta 500WS pod and will help make science open, inclusive and accessible. All donations are tax deductible.
Register via Eventbrite, or RSVP through Facebook.
More about the film:
"My Love Affair with the Brain" is an award-winning PBS documentary that brings the viewer right into the heart of science and into a deeper understanding of your own brain. Critically acclaimed, extensively tested for educational use from 5th grade thru Nobel Prize winners, this film is an intimate and inspirational portrait of one of the founders of modern neuroscience.
Prepare to be smitten. Experience for yourself why Dr. Marian Diamond described her 60-year career researching the human brain as “pure joy.”
It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Diamond changed science and society in dramatic ways over the course of her career. Her groundbreaking work is all the more remarkable as it began when so few women entered science at all. Shouted at from the back of the conference hall by noteworthy male academics as she presented her research, and disparaged in the scientific journals of a more conservative era, Dr. Diamond simply did the work and followed where her curiosity led her, bringing about a worldwide paradigm shift or two in the process. As she points out, in order to get to the answers that matter, you have to start by asking the right questions.
Part biography, part scientific adventure story, part inspirational tale, this is a story of a worthy role model, a woman who has lived joyously at the forefront of scientific exploration and education, finding and sharing fact-based good news about the brain.
Narrated by TV-star Mayim Bialik (Amy on Big Bang Theory, Blossom on Blossom). She not only plays a neuroscientist on TV, but is one in real life, Dr. Mayim Bialik, a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA.
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Event Details
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics in the School of Biological Sciences Biao Zeng defends his thesis:
Blood eQTL Detection in Structured Populations and its Application to Interpretation of Genetic Association Studies.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Gregory Gibson
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee Members:
Dr. Joe Lachance
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Annalise Paaby
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Patrick McGrath
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Jingjing Yang
School of Medicine
Emory University
Abstract:
Expression QTL (eQTL) detection has emerged as an important tool for unravelling the relationship between genetic risk factors and disease or clinical phenotypes. Most studies focus on analyses predicated on the assumption that only a single causal variant explains the association signal in each interval. This greatly simplifies the statistical modeling, but is liable to biases in scenarios where multiple linked causal-variants are responsible. Here in this thesis, my primary goal was to address the prevalence of secondary cis-eQTL signals regulating peripheral blood gene expression locally, utilizing two large human cohort studies, each greater than 2,500 samples with accompanying whole genome genotypes. The CAGE dataset is a compendium of Illumina microarray studies, and the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) is a two-generation Affymetrix dataset. I firstly describe performing simulation to reveal the potential interference of causal variants in LD regions. I then also describe a Bayesian co-localization analysis of the extent of sharing of cis-eQTL detected in both studies as well as with the BIOS RNA-seq dataset. Stepwise conditional modeling demonstrates that multiple eQTL signals are present for ~40% of over 3,500 eGenes in both microarray datasets, and that the number of loci with additional signals reduces by approximately two-thirds with each conditioning step. Although fewer than 20% of the peak signals across platforms fine-map to the same credible interval, the co-localization analysis finds that as many as 50%~60% of the primary eQTL are actually shared. Subsequently, co-localization of eQTL signals with GWAS hits detected 1,349 genes whose expression in peripheral blood is associated with 591 human phenotype traits or diseases, including enrichment for genes with regulatory functions such as protein kinase activity and DNA binding. Just one quarter of these co-localization signals are replicated, further highlighting the technological and methodological barriers to reconciliation of GWAS and eQTL signals. My results are provided as a web-based resource for visualization of multi-site regulation of gene expression and their association with human complex traits and disease states. In addition to the cis-eQTL study, as a member of the eQTLgen consortium, I also conduct trans-eQTL detection in multiple cohorts, including FHS, which contains related individuals, and performed cis-trans eQTL mediation analysis, which I will as a side project. This thesis provides novel insights into the complexity of gene regulation and the low consistency of fine mapping across studies, and introduces new software, PolyQTL, for colocalization of genetic signals in structured populations.
Event Details
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biology in the School of Biological Sciences Chinar Patil will defend his dissertation Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Radiation in Lake Malawi Cichlids.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. J. Todd Streelman, Advisor
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee members:
Dr. Michael Goodisman
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Soojin Yi
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Fredrik O. Vannberg
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Reade B. Roberts
W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology
Comparative Medicine Institute
North Carolina State University
Summary
Understanding the genomic basis and origin of phenotypic variation is one of the fundamental questions of biology. Evolutionary radiations characterized by a range of natural phenotypic variants between genetically closely related species are a great model to study the origin and genetic mechanisms underlying phenotypic diversity. I use one such model, cichlids from Lake Malawi to understand the basis of complex behavior evolution. Lake Malawi cichlids are broadly divided into rock dwelling and sand dwelling lineages based on the habitat they colonize in the lake. Within this split on the basis of habitat comes a wide range of behavioral differences that define rock dweller and sand dweller cichlids. Within the sand dweller lineage, males build species specific bowers to attract females in seasonal leks. Whole genomes from 28 different cichlid species from Lake Malawi were used to show that:
(a) Most of the variation segregating rock dwelling cichlids from sand dwelling cichlids is in functional regions in the genome, associated with genes and pathways related to early brain development and adult behavior and
(b) Bower building behavior has repeatedly evolved via with polygenic selection on ancient and new genetic variants associated with genes and pathways involved in neural activity.
Event Details
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biology in the School of Biological Sciences Yusuf Uddin will defend his dissertation Biochemical Characterization and Cryo-EM Studies of a Highly Active Spinach Photosystem II Complex.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Ingeborg Schmidt-Krey
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee members:
Dr. Al Merrill
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Bridgette Barry
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Loren Williams
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Nael McCarty
Department of Pediatrics
School of Medicine
Emory University
Summary
Photosystem II (PSII) is a large, photosynthetic membrane protein complex responsible for water oxidation and the formation of oxygen on Earth. Understanding the structure of this protein is important for studying photosynthetic energy transfer and assembly mechanisms in higher plants. Recently, technological breakthroughs in the field of cryo-EM have lead to the ability to study this membrane protein by single particle analysis (SPA). This technique does not require the growth of crystals, a challenge that has hindered structural determination in higher plant PSII. In this work, the biochemical preparation of spinach PSII for cryo-EM is optimized to maintain high activity. Subunit characterization, oxygen activity, UV absorbance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and negative stain transmission electron microscopy were employed to characterize the spinach PSII preparation. Cryo-EM experiments resulted in a first model of a highly active C2 PSII complex, which contains all intrinsic and extrinsic subunits essential for activity.
Event Details
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biology in the School of Biological Sciences Angela Pena-Gonzalez will defend her dissertation Integrating Traditional Microbiology and Epidemiology with Cutting-Edge (Meta-)Genomics to Identify Enteric Pathogens and Elucidate their Signatures on the Gut Microbiome.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Kostas T. Konstantinidis
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee members:
Dr. King Jordan
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Frank Stewart
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Gregory Gibson
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Karen Levy
Rollin School of Public Health
Emory University
Summary
How enteric pathogens interact with the gut microbiome remains largely speculative; yet, this information is the cornerstone for better understanding the infection process and whether different pathogens, due to distinct virulence mechanisms, cause distinctive signatures in the microbiome. Such signatures could also be useful for diagnostics. Notably, a total of 38.4 million cases of foodborne illness per year cannot be attributed to specific causative agents, with diarrheal infections being predominant among them. Although most diarrheal cases quickly self-resolve and hence, do not require typing of the causative agent(s), there are instances where acute diarrheal infections could lead to mortality such as in children in the developing world, making detailed investigations of the causative agents and their signatures necessary. In this thesis, a new bioinformatics approach was devised that integrated traditional, culture-based information with epidemiologic data and metagenomic views of the gut microbiome in order to identify the causative agent of infectious diarrhea. Application to diarrhea samples from children in Ecuador (South America) and foodborne outbreaks in USA provided diagnostic signatures and signs of infection not attainable by traditional methods. For instance, our approach was able to distinguish pathogens from their innocuous, co-occurring commensal close relatives, and identified novel clonal complexes of E. coli-Shigella as the causative agents in about 50% of the diarrheal cases in Ecuador. The importance of these findings for diagnostics, and the risk from acquiring infection in rural vs. urban settings will be also discussed.
Event Details
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biology in the School of Biological Sciences D. Joshua Parris will defend his dissertation Microbiome Community Change in the Guts Of Marine Fish: Feeding and Life Stage Transition as Significant Organizing Factors.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Frank Stewart
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee members:
Dr. Mark Hay
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Tom DiChristina
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Julia Kubanek
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Kostas T. Konstantinidis
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Summary
All animals harbor microbial communities (microbiomes) that play vital roles in host health, development, behavior, and evolution. Determining the processes that regulate microbiome diversity and function is therefore a central question in biology. Numerous investigations have sought to quantify the influence of factors such as diet, host genotype, and environment on gut microbiome assembly, taxonomic composition, and function (Spor et al. 2011, Koenig et al. 2011, Myles et al. 2013). However, these studies have been mostly limited to a handful of model or commercially important host systems. We remain naïve in our understanding of how the importance of different microbiome assembly processes might vary among diverse hosts. This is especially true for the most phylogenetically and ecologically diverse of the vertebrate groups, teleost fishes. In this dissertation, I first describe compositional changes in the gut microbiome associated with the transition from a pelagic larval stage to reef settlement in damselfish (Pomacentridae) and cardinalfish (Apogonidae). Results identify a key transition in microbiome structure across host life stage, suggesting changes in the functional contribution of microbiomes over development in two ecologically dominant reef fish families. Next, I use the clownfish Premnas biaculeatus to test how diversity, predicted gene content, and gene transcription of the microbiome vary over a diurnal period following a feeding event. Results confirm feeding as a major restructuring force in intestinal microbiomes over a short timeframe (hours). Finally, I describe ongoing work to characterize the phylogenetic novelty and functional capability of a fish-associated Endozoicomonas bacterium. While this genus has been identified as a symbiont of marine invertebrates, its role in the guts of fish remains unknown. Together, these studies advance our understanding of the diversity and potential function of the fish microbiome, setting the stage for studies to identify the microbiome’s effect on fish health and ecology.
Event Details
A new study demonstrates the physics that elephants use to feed themselves the massive quantities of leaves, fruit and roots needed to sustain their multi-ton bodies.
A human can pick up multiple objects at once by squeezing them together with both hands and arms. An African elephant also picks up many items at once but with only one appendage—its soft, heavy trunk. How the elephant solves this challenge could provide inspiration for future robotics.
A wild African elephant eats rapidly, consuming 190 grams of food a minute, to provide adequate fuel for its vast bulk. “Elephants are in a rush when they are eating,” said David L. Hu, associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The elephant diet consists of large volumes of plant materials such as leaves, fruit and roots. To eat these, elephants sweep loose items into a pile and crush them into a manageable solid that can be picked up by the trunk.
“They don’t just use the trunk’s strong muscles to squeeze the plants together,” said Hu. “The elephants also use the weight of the trunk, and they do that by forming a joint in the trunk. The trunk below the joint becomes a stiff pillar that applies weight to the pile of plant materials.”
About 30 percent of the applied force is derived from the pillar’s weight alone, and about 70 percent from exerting muscular effort, according to a new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface by Hu and colleagues at Georgia Tech, the Rochester Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta.
The African elephant can raise or lower the trunk joint’s height by up to 11 centimeters to increase or reduce the applied force. “When elephants need more force, the joint is higher up on the trunk,” Hu said. Elephant trunks weigh about 150 kilograms and have 40,000 muscles. “The huge number of muscles in the trunk allows the elephant great freedom for where it puts this joint.”
Hu and his colleagues studied a 34-year-old female African elephant (Loxodonta africana) over several weeks in the summer of 2017. All experiments were supervised by the staff at Zoo Atlanta. Food was arranged by hand into a pile in the center of a force plate to measure how much force the animal generated.
The elephant’s trunk is similar to other boneless organs in nature such as the octopus’s arm and the human tongue. But unlike an octopus’s arm, an elephant’s trunk is heavy enough to provide significant force on an object without muscular pressure. This is the first study to show that an animal can use the weight of its own appendage to help apply force and the first with a live elephant to understand forces that it can apply to materials.
Using mathematical models, the researchers found that the greater the number of objects to be squeezed and picked up, the greater the force that must be applied.
“Picking up two objects requires very little force to press them together, while picking up 40,000 objects requires a lot of force,” Hu said. This principle was tested experimentally with the live elephant by presenting multiple food items varying in number from four to 40,000 in number. The experiments showed that the elephant could vary forces applied with its trunk by a factor of four depending on the number of food items to be picked up.
This research could have applications in robotics, where heavier machines would appear to have few advantages over smaller ones. But, in the future, heavy robotic manipulators could be designed with several adjustable joints that use the device’s own weight to provide adjustable pressure and save energy. There are currently no commercial robots designed to apply their own weight to objects, Hu noted.
“You could have future robots with several joints, which could apply various weight pressures below joints to help compress objects together for lifting them efficiently,” said Hu. “This would allow you to use the weight of the joints themselves to provide force instead of relying on batteries and extra motors to apply these forces, and that would mean using less energy. For instance, you could have a heavy robot with four joints, and by bending the top joint, the weight below it could apply a load. If you wanted to provide less weight pressure, you could instead bend the second-from-the-top joint. This study shows that there are some advantages for robots in being big and heavy.”
African elephants like the ones in this study have two muscular extensions at the tip of their trunk resembling a pair of fingers that also could be studied as models for future robotics. It’s not well known that elephants have such projections, and this understanding could inform work that is already underway. “The elephant’s technique with these extensions might be used to develop soft robotic grippers that can pick up delicate items such as fruit without damaging them,” Hu noted.
This work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office Mechanical Sciences Division, Complex Dynamics and Systems Program, under contract W911NF-12-R-0011.
CITATION: Jianing Wu, et al., “Elephant trunks form joints to squeeze together small objects,” (Journal of the Royal Society Interface 15, 2018) http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0377
Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
177 North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA
Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu).
Writer: John Tibbetts
Episode 7 of ScienceMatters' Season 1 stars Jennifer Leavey. Listen to the podcast here and read the transcript here.
Jennifer Leavey is a principal academic professional in the School of Biological Science. She also serves College of Sciences as the coordinator of the Integrated Science Curriculum and director of Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project.
The Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project is an interdisciplinary educational initiative to recruit and retain students in STEM careers through the study of how urban habitats affect honey bee health and how technology can be used to study bees.
Leavey is also the faculty director of the Science and Math Research Training (SMaRT) and Scientific Health and Related Professions (SHaRP) Living Learning Communities of the College of Sciences.These communities aim to create lasting connections among College of Sciences majors who are interested in research (SMaRT) or intend to pursue additional education and training health-rleated fields.
In Episode 7 of ScienceMatters, Leavey shares her long-lasting passion for both science and rock music. By day, she’s an academic professional; but when she straps on a guitar , she mutates to Leucine Zipper, leader of the rock band Zinc Fingers.
For a change of pace, ScienceMatters samples the band’s science-inspired songs. Leavey shares how the band uses music and other media to make science concepts fun and accessible.
Take a listen at sciencematters.gatech.edu.
Enter to win a prize by answering the question for Episode 7:
In episode 7, what is the name of the song that Jennifer Leavey says sounds like a love song but is actually about bacteria living together in biofilms?
Submit your entry by 11 AM on Monday, Oct. 8, at sciencematters.gatech.edu. Answer and winner will be announced shortly after the quiz closes.
Jennifer Leavey is the integrated science curriculum coordinator for the College of Sciences. She also directs the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project, an interdisciplinary initiative designed to recruit and retain STEM students by studying how urban habitats affect honey bee health and how technology can be used to study bees.
“Most of the programs I work on relate to encouraging undergraduates to become more engaged in studying science,” Leavey said. “The Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project sprouted out of the idea that if something is authentic, it doesn’t matter what discipline students are in or what class they’re taking, they’ll become interested in it.”
Learn more about Jennifer Leavey's activities, including leading a science rock band, in the full story by Victor Rogers.
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biology in the School of Biological Sciences Deanna Beatty will defend her dissertation Effects of Macroalgal Versus Coral Reef Dominance on Coral Survival, Chemical Defense, and Microbiomes.
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Mark Hay
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee members:
Dr. Frank Stewart
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Julia Kubanek
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Danielle Dixson
School of Marine Science and Policy
University of Delaware
Dr. Kim Ritchie
School of Science and Mathematics
University of South Carolina Beaufort
SUMMARY
Coral reefs are among the earth’s most biodiverse and productive ecosystems, but are undergoing precipitous decline due to coral bleaching and disease following thermal stress events, which are increasing in frequency and spatial scale. These effects are exacerbated by local stressors such as overfishing and pollution, collectively causing an increasing number of reefs to shift from coral to macroalgal dominance. These stressors can harm or kill corals through diverse mechanisms, including alterations in how corals interact with microorganisms. By employing a variety of field sampling and field experimental approaches, I investigated consequences of local protection from fishing and coral versus macroalgal dominance of the benthos on coral survival, chemical defense, and microbiomes within paired algal dominated fished areas and coral dominated marine protected areas (MPAs) in Fiji. I demonstrate that i) coral larvae from a macroalgal dominated area exhibited higher pre-settlement mortality and reduced settlement compared to those from a coral dominated area, ii) juveniles planted into a coral dominated MPA survived better than those planted into a macroalgal dominated fished area and differential survival depended on whether macroalgae were immediately adjacent to juvenile coral, iii) corals possess chemical defenses toward the thermally-regulated coral bleaching pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus, but this defense is compromised by elevated temperature, iv) for a bleaching susceptible but ecologically important acroporid coral, anti-pathogen chemical defense is compromised when coral resides within macroalgal dominated reefs and this effect can be influenced by both the current and historic state of the reef. Effects on coral survival and chemical defense for individuals residing within coral versus macroalgal dominated areas largely coincided with nuanced differences in coral microbiomes (e.g., in microbiome variability and specific indicator bacterial taxa) but not with major shifts in microbiome composition. These findings have implications for reef conservation and for understanding how coral-microbe interactions will respond to the pressures of global change.
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