News & Fun

Last week, we said goodbye and good luck to Alex, who moved back to Toronto to take an EM manager position. Stay tuned to hear about more cool projects he worked on! Alex's leaving also provided incentive for the first (mostly) mask-less lab get-together of 2021. Looking forward to more--many overdue--celebrations soon!

This week, we welcomed Jingjing Gao, a new postdoctoral fellow, who was finally able to join us after over a year of Covid-related delays past her initial start date! Lab distancing restrictions also dropped this week, meaning everyone can check out the lab's growing succulent collection at the same time...although Sage has mixed feelings about the rapid progression back to 'normal'.

Congrats to Mike, who recently got an adorable puppy named Logan! Logan is clearly loving Boston living (and provides ample content for posting non-Sage dog pictures)! Also congrats to Matt on his AHA fellowship and TIBS review on detecting and rescuing stalled ribosomes!

We continued the tradition of a throwing a lab party at the start of the year - this edition was a bit different, kicking off with a Zoom C/Mocktail class. As evidence of a good virtual celebration, we only managed to catalog the preparations (and started restocking for future in-person whiskey/Diet Coke hours). Thanks to Sam and Mike for putting it on!

Welcome to new postdoc Ben Adams, who joins us after his PhD studies in the Hebert Lab! Ben is the first of hopefully eventually 3 incoming members to make it here during crazy times...which calls for an updated lab 'photo'. Sage showed off her pandemic style over the holidays.

Excited to share our work with the Park Lab showing that protein dislocation by the P5A-ATPase ATP13A1/Spf1 is required to maintain mitochondrial TA protein localization. Congrats to Mike and Jerry, and big thanks to Alban from the Harper lab for the TMT-MS analyses!

Also check out Alex's work (1 & 2) with the Kranzusch lab on some amazing bacterial cyclic oligonucleotide sensing proteins!

We took advantage of nice weather over the summer for some safely-distanced celebrations while Sage explored the cell.

We're back. Two weeks of socially-distanced science-ing in shifts down...who knows how many more to go, but yay pipettes! To commemorate our return back to lab, here are some glimpses into Sage's range of WFH feelings.

It's been ~a month of remote working, but we're staying motivated! Congratulations to Sam, who passed her PQE last Monday over Zoom (we also celebrated over Zoom), and to Matt, who was named an Albert Ryan fellow!

Excited to share the follow-up tRNA recycling story identifying a role for ELAC1 in removing 2',3'-cyclic phosphates from tRNAs cleaved during ribosome-associated quality control: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(20)30116-9. Congratulations to Matt (and the Gygi lab)! We remembered to take pictures before/after, but not during, celebrations (which also coincided with Sage-the-lab-dog's birthday).

Happy new year! Welcome to our new visiting undergraduate student, Ta-Chien Hsieh. Not easy to keep track of everything that's happened the last several months - hard work, some holiday gatherings, and our annual new year party where we embraced (unstable) unicorns and our feelings about lab through memes.

The lab celebrated recent good grant news with a sushi boat, appreciated pumpkin season at journal club, and (Sage) modeled some Halloween costumes.

Back from another fun Cell Biology departmental retreat with fortuitously good weather. This year, our lab had 100% attendance and talk/poster participation. We also shared our "lab nightmares".

Super excited to try out some of our crazier ideas with support from a Packard Fellowship!

Happy birthday to Matt. It was momentous for two reasons: Sam was the first person in the lab to bring in a cake with a personalized message (and importantly, a candle), and all of our lab's windows have finally been replaced after 2 months of being boarded up for building renovations. Everyone is appreciating the extra burst of happiness from the simple pleasure of seeing daylight again.

Thanks to the NIH and NIGMS for supporting our work with the New Innovator Award! 

Readjusting to the brisk work hard/play hard pace of the fall. Highlights include the Smith Family foundation poster session and a visitor from fun past scientific endeavors.

We celebrated Jerry's productive summer this week with two happy hours, a poster session, and a symposium (very little caught on camera). The rest of us are now off to make the most of the last 2 quiet-ish weeks of summer in the lab before the semester starts.

Happy Vincent's birthday (aka RNA Day)! Growing whiskey hours, cake celebrations, and coffee are offsetting the sunlight deprivation from window replacements.

Hard to believe that half of the year has passed! We deep-cleaned the lab...and then rewarded ourselves by exploring some new hangouts in Fenway.

It's been a busy start to summer: happy birthday to Sam, a good bit of traveling and presentations by lab members, and welcome to our summer student from UNC, Jerry Wei!

Lots of scientific and non-scientific fun at our first lab retreat organized by Vincent!

Check out our story on a mechanism that links protein and tRNA quality control on stalled ribosomes! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-019-0211-4

Sam Sedor joins the lab for her dissertation research!

Happy that tea (whiskey) time is starting to catch on around the 4th floor of C building, and bidding farewell to Yang at the end of another great rotation!

Congrats again to Matt, this time on a successful qualifying exam (starting a good streak for the lab)! Also celebrating Michelle's rotation and Ivana's paper acceptance!

Back from a fun conference just in time to celebrate a paper acceptance. Congratulations, Matt!