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The 15th Annual Cell and Developmental Biology Retreat was held May 19, 2017 at the Joe C. Davis YMCA Outdoor Center in Nashville. This annual event provides an opportunity for faculty, staff, and lab members to meet and discuss their research in a relaxed environment. The agenda consisted of student presentations and poster sessions. Award… Read More

Cell survival is dependent upon regulation of numerous proteins, both cytosolic and membrane bound. Reporting in Nature Communications, Mukhtar Ahmed, Ph.D., and Ian Macara, Ph.D., identified an unexpected link between cell survival and the polarized delivery of proteins to the surface of mammary epithelial cells. Read More

Understanding the processes that regulate aging is crucial to potentially increasing longevity and enhancing quality of life. Using the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae), Christopher Lord, Ph.D., Ophir Ospovat and Susan Wente, Ph.D., demonstrated that accumulation of tRNA (transfer RNA) in the nucleus increased replicative life span. These results were published this month in… Read More

Congratulations to Chloe Snider, CDB graduate student in Kathy Gould’s laboratory, who has been named the Vanderbilt Prize Scholar for 2017. The Vanderbilt Prize Scholar is a female Ph.D. candidate who has demonstrated excellent leadership qualities and outstanding potential to impact medicine through research during her career. The Vanderbilt… Read More

The Zanic lab is currently looking for a research assistant to support our protein expression and purification needs. If you might know of any suitable candidates, please encourage them to contact Dr. Zanic directly and/or apply here. More on the Zanic lab can be found here. Read More

Twelve outstanding faculty members from across the university have been named to the 2017 class of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. The class comprises highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from the social sciences, life and physical sciences, clinical sciences and humanities, as well as law, mathematics and engineering. Melanie Ohi is an associate professor… Read More

Vivien Casagrande, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) noted for her many contributions to the visual sciences, died peacefully at her home on Saturday, Jan. 21. She was 74. She is survived by her husband, James Andrew “Mac” McKanna, and sons James and Paul… Read More

The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology announces the retirement of Vivien Casagrande, Ph.D. Dr. Casagrande, professor of Cell & Developmental Biology, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Psychology and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator, joined the Vanderbilt University faculty in 1975. Her studies have mapped the visual brain circuitry in… Read More

Melaine Ohi, Associate Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology, has received a secondary appointment as Associate Professor in Biochemistry. The laboratory of Dr. Melanie Ohi is interested in understanding how large molecular machines are structurally organized and how this organization translates into function within the cell. We use single particle cryo-electron… Read More

Nine Vanderbilt University faculty members, including Cell and Developmental faculty members Alissa Weaver and Stephen Brandt, have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this year. Read More