Michelle and Gerardo recently presented in a three minute thesis (3MT) competition! Gerardo’s thesis was titled “DNA Damage? Call 9-1-1”, and Michelle’s thesis was “Small RNA, Big Impact: Tackling Testicular Tumors”. Pictured is Michelle and Gerardo with Dr. George Yancopoulos, co-founder and president/CSO of Regeneron, the keynote lecturer.

Weiss lab has received a Bass seed grant to further research on “Determining the Role of the miR290-295 Cluster in Testicular Germ Cell Tumor Progression.”

See the article for more info!: https://www.vet.cornell.edu/about-us/news/sandra-atlas-bass-endowment-advances-cancer-research-through-seed-grants

Check out our newest publication in eLife, a collaboration with the Cohen and Smolka labs:  “A TOPBP1 allele causing male infertility uncouples XY silencing dynamics from sex body formation” (click here!)

Check out the Chronicle story featuring our research!: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/03/sperm-formation-step-could-hold-clues-male-contraception

The CVG Scholar Award is intended to recognize the genomics promise and exciting research goals of early stage trainees. With 26 applicants, the review was more competitive than ever before. Even with those odds, Michelle still received a top-3 score- congrats Michelle!

Bob takes on a new administrative role as Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate School (check out the article below!):

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/08/robert-weiss-named-senior-associate-dean-graduate-school

The Weiss lab contributes to a new collaborative study on nanoparticle oral delivery:

We sadly say goodbye to our two terrific summer students. Pictured below is Kimaya Bakhle, a VIP program participant and combined degree rotation student (jointly hosted with the Sethupathy lab).  Kimaya was recently awarded the prestigious 2023 Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Research Award for Veterinary Students, and presented her research at the Veterinary Scholars Symposium.

Pictured below is Victoria Lopez-Scarim, a participant in the Molecular Biology & Genetics REU program. She recently gave a wrap up presentation about her summer research project, in which she investigated the 9-1-1 complex in collaboration with Gerardo.

Thanks to the both of you for all of your hard work!

Congrats to Michelle on her successful A-exam!

Many congratulations to James on his successful defense! Good luck in vet school, we can’t wait to see what your future holds!

Check out our newest collaborative publication:  A TOPBP1 Allele Causing Male Infertility Uncouples XY Silencing Dynamics From Sex Body Formation.

Destiny and Bob visit Spelman College to participate in the Spelman Career Fair and give a research seminar to the Spelman Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) program.

Many congratulations to Irma on her successful defense, we can’t wait to see what you do next!

A warm welcome to the Weiss lab’s summer ’22 students, Justin and Jorlane!!

Justin is a 3rd year biology major with a minor in environmental sciences at Morehouse College, visiting for the MBG REU program. Jorlane is a Puerto Rican rising senior majoring in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, and is here as a UPR-Ponce/CVM exchange student.

Congratulations to Tanmay for graduating with a Bachelor’s in Human Biology, Health, and Society (HBHS)! We wish you much luck in all of your future endeavors.

A warm welcome to Michelle Liu! She has joined the Weiss lab as a graduate student in the field of Genetic Genomics & Development.

Also! Be sure to check out our newest paper, a collaboration with the Lin lab: Long-chain fatty acyl coenzyme A inhibits NME1/2 and regulates cancer metastasis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35259022/ .

Check out the paper here:

Expanding homogeneous culture of human primordial germ cell-like cells maintaining germline features without serum or feeder layers. https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(22)00056-X

Congratulations to Catalina Pereira, Gerardo A. Arroyo-Martinez, and the other authors involved! Check out the papers here:

Multiple 9-1-1 complexes promote homolog synapsis, DSB repair, and ATR signaling during mammalian meiosis. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68677.sa0

Phosphoproteomics of ATR signaling in mouse testes. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68648

Members of the Weiss lab celebrated the 2021 holiday season with brunch from Agava!

Congratulations to both Destiny Van and Gerardo A. Arroyo Martinez on passing their A-exams this summer!!

IGF2BP2 Promotes Cancer Progression by Degrading the RNA Transcript Encoding a v-ATPase Subunit: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.01.438101

Multiple 911 complexes promote homolog synapsis, DSB repair and ATR signaling during mammalian meiosis: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.09.439198

Phosphoproteomics of ATR Signaling in Prophase I of Mouse Meiosis: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.13.439649

Cancer Researchers and Cancer Patients Communicating about Basic Science

Read the full article here: https://cancercommunity.nature.com/documents/cancer-researchers-and-cancer-patients-communicating-about-basic-science-521d1eb4-1066-4e9e-92a6-1bea37062e1a

Collaborative paper with the Cerione and Lin labs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388-020-01637-w

Cat’s dissertation is formally approved.  Congratulations to Dr. Pereira!

Irma Fernandez is selected as an Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society Scholar!  This highly selective honor recognizes graduate students for outstanding scholarly achievement and efforts to promote diversity.

Ravi Dhawan is awarded a grant from the Dextra Undergraduate Research Endowment Fund, and Anabella Maria Galang is awarded a grant from the Ann S. and Robert R. Morley Student Research Fund. Congratulations!

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” ~ William Shakespeare

The Weiss Lab welcomes Destiny Van!

Congratulations to James Mullmann on passing his A-exam!

Michael Downey and Matthew Guo have receive their undergraduate degrees from Cornell and are moving on to the next stages in their lives.

James Mullmann has been awarded an NIH F30 Fellowship for his project “Elucidating the tumor suppressive effects of the sirtuin, SIRT1, in triple-negative breast cancer.” Congratulations, James!

Congratulations to DVM/PhD student Amanda Loehr on passing her A-exam!

Amanda received an NIH F30 fellowship for her project titled “The role of the DNA damage response in the development and therapeutic sensitivity of malignant testicular germ cell tumors.”

Our lab celebrates the 2019 holiday season! A special goodbye to Maria Ruiz, we will miss you next year and wish you all the best!

What a summer it’s been! This summer, we welcomed Suzin Webb as our new lab manager! We are so happy to have you. We also had three wonderful summer students: Carla Patricia Reyes-Flores, Natrine Cheuk, and Jamie Cockey. We are so glad to have had you in the lab this summer, and we look forward to hearing what great things you accomplish in the future!

Carla spent the summer studying the roles of the 9-1-1 complexes in female mammalian meiosis! We are so proud of all you accomplished this summer and are sad to see you go. All the best finishing up your undergraduate studies at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez!

See the Cornell news article here: https://www.vet.cornell.edu/news/20190903/graduate-student-irma-fernandez-wins-award-howard-hughes-medical-institute. See the HHMI announcement here: https://www.hhmi.org/news/44-gilliam-fellowships-awarded-to-support-diversity-and-inclusion-in-science

Bloom, J.C., Loehr, A.R., Schimenti, J.C., and Weiss, R.S. (2019) Germline genome protection: implications for gamete quality and germ cell tumorigenesis.Andrology 7:516-526. Pubmed.

Riter, R.N. and Weiss, R.S. (2019) Connecting students with patients and survivors to enhance cancer research training. Cancer Research, in press.

https://research.cornell.edu/research/cancer-and-sirt5

Thank you to the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the conference organizers for a wonderful conference! Catalina, PhD candidate, presented a talk titled “9-1-1 DNA Damage Response Clamp Subunit RAD9A Promotes Checkpoint Signaling to Maintain Genomic Stability,” and Matthew and Michael, undergraduates, presented a poster titled “Multiple Mammalian 9-1-1 DNA Damage Response Complexes Are Important for Meiotic Chromosome Maintenance.”

Sirtuins’ connection to cancer is a big topic in life sciences research. What are they and why are they important to the hunt for cancer therapies? Read more about the work Irma in our lab here: https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/whats-all-talk-about-sirtuins

Infertility and birth defects often arise due to improper genetic quality control during meiosis. We are working with Marcus Smolka’s lab in Molecular Biology and Genetics to resolve how the cellular DNA damage response ensures genetic quality control during meiosis and enables the efficient and accurate production of gametes. Read the article here: https://research.cornell.edu/research/genetic-quality-control-during-meiosis

http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(17)31541-3

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/11/study-reveals-why-testicular-cancer-responds-chemo

https://www2.vet.cornell.edu/news/20171009/dr-robert-weiss-appointed-new-associate-dean-research-and-graduate-education

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/01/softening-tumor-tissue-could-aid-cancer-drug-delivery

“Tumor promoting functions for the DNA damage response protein HUS1”

“A novel role for the Fanconi Anemia pathway in bile acid homeostasis”

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/07/local-center-part-biden-s-cancer-moonshot-summit

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/05/33-seniors-honored-2016-merrill-presidential-scholars

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/03/enzyme-inhibitor- looks-promising-against-cancer

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/04/cornell-swiss- study-reveals-sirtuin-way- healthy-heart

INVESTIGTATING HOW THE DNA DAMAGE RESPONSE AND STEM CELL PROPERTIES OF TESTICULAR GERM CELL CANCERS INFLUENCE CHEMOSENSITIVITY

Pierpont, Timothy M.¹, Lyndaker, Amy M.¹, Anderson, Claire M.¹, Roden, Jamie L.¹, Bagepalli , Lina¹, Kataria, Nandita¹, Braxon, Alicia¹ , Hu, Hilary¹, Garness, Jason², Cook, Matthew S.², Capel, Blanche², Schlafer, Donald H.¹, Southard, Teresa¹, and Weiss, Robert S¹.

¹Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA and ²Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

A well deserved promotion! Here are some photos from the celebratory lab party.

Congratulations to Gabi Balmus and co-authors on the acceptance of their manuscript: “HUS1 regulates in vivo responses to genotoxic chemotherapies” for publication in Oncogene.

Congratulations to Pei Xin Lim and co-authors on acceptance of their manuscript: “Genome Protection by the 9-1-1 Complex Subunit HUS1 Requires Clamp Formation, DNA Contacts, and ATR Signaling-Independent Effector Functions” for publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Pei Xin’s research focused on elucidating the molecular interactions of HUS1 with DNA repair factors with the ultimate goal of formulating novel antitumor therapeutics.