The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has affected many different areas of research and work across every sector of healthcare and biomedical research.
Stakeholders across the world are developing new ways of doing work and sharing expertise in a remote fashion with online technologies. This is helping the scientific community to remain connected, improve skills and advance research despite the restrictions on laboratory and office access that have been in place across much of the world.
One Lister Fellow who has been trying to make the most of this situation is Anne Straube of the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology at Warwick Medical School in the University of Warwick.She was made a full professor at the University of Warwick on the 1st of June 2020 and since the 6th of May has been running a very successful weekly virtual seminar series with more than 200 specialist attendees from all over the world.
The series is sponsored by the Journal of Cell Science and is entitled Motors in Quarantine. It is structured as 2 talks as 15 minute presentations followed by 15 minutes of Q&A.
Following the session there is also a more informal ‘meet the speaker’ session where attendees can ask questions in a smaller group. Some of the webinars have also been recorded and made available on-demand for 48 hours after the event.
To date academics and scientists from all over the world have taken part and discussed a wide variety of topics applicable to the mechanochemical cell biology community. The next three sessions are:
24 June 2020
Jing Xu – UC Merced | Cholesterol in cargo membrane modulates effect of MAP tau on kinesin
Gant Luxton – Minnesota | One AAA+ ring to rule them all? Investigating the mechanism(s) of torsinA-dependent nuclear-cytoplasmic communication
1 July 2020
Radhika Subramanian – Harvard | Imaging Microtubule Depolymerases in Action within bundles at Protofilament Resolution by Atomic Force Microscopy
Girish Mali (Carter lab) – MRC-LMB | Mechanistic insights into dynein motors of cilia
8 July 2020
Jia Wang (Hammer lab) – NIH | Integrin-dependent actomyosin arcs drive B cell immune synapse formation
Sebastian Baumann (Maurer lab) – CRG | In vitro reconstitution of mammalian RNA transport
You can find out more at the event web page including signup instructions at the bottom of the page. You can also find out more at the hashtag #MotorsInQuarantine across social media.
Professor Straube’s research primarily focuses on cytoskeletal dynamics and in particular the role of microtubules in various cellular processes. She works at the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology at Warwick Medical School in the University of Warwick.
You can find out more about her research and career at the Centre’s website here.
We are very pleased to have played a role in supporting professor’s Straube’s work and delighted to see the positive impact that her work on the Motors in Quarantine webinar series is having in the field.
