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2018

2018/4/1

Claire Bromley joins the lab!

2018/2/1

Rachel Stewart joins the lab!

2018/1/23-24

Yu-Chiun visited Taiwan, giving a lecture at the winter school on soft matters and biophysics and a seminar at ICOB, Academia Sinica.

Thanks to Drs. Hsuan-Yi Chen, Keng-Hui Lin and Chen-Hui Chen for the invitation and hospitality!

2018/1/10

The Wang lab published its first paper since we started 4 years ago at the CDB! "A homeostatic apical microtubule network shortens cells for epithelial folding via a basal polarity shift" came out in Nature Cell Biology! Congratulations to Michiko and Mustafa. Also see the Japanese Review here.

This paper describes a novel microtubule structure that exerts pushing forces to scaffold the apical membrane surface prior to morphogenesis and becomes coopted to shorten the cell height of the initiating cells via coupling to basal shifts of polarity to initiate dorsal fold formation during gastrulation. These results provide a mechanistic explanation for how cell shape changes are initiated following polarity shifts during dorsal fold formation and usher in polarity-based microtubule forces for epithelial folding processes that are not dominated by myosin contractility.

2017

2017/12/3

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at The 2017 ASCB-EMBL meeting in Philadephia, USA.

Thanks to Drs. Matthew Tyska and Danelle Devenport for the opportunity to present our work.

2017/9/1 - 2

Anthony attended the RIKEN Summer School as a defending poster award winner and brought back his second poster award at these events! Congrats!

2017/7/12

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the EMBL symposium: "Mechanical Forces in Biology" in Heidelberg, Germany.

2017/6/20

Our collaborators, Fu-Lai Wen and Tatsuo Shibata, published a paper in Biophysical Journal entitled, "Epithelial Folding Driven by Apical or Basal-Lateral Modulation: Geometric Features, Mechanical Inference, and Boundary Effects", of which Yu-Chiun is an author.

This paper showed that a flat sheet of epithelium can fold via mechanical modulation on either the apical, lateral, or basal side, using a vertex modeling approach. The theory showed that modulation of each side of the cells results in distinct geometrical features, which in principle could be used to predict and infer mechanical changes in experimental systems by measuring the changes of cell shape. Congratulations to Fu-Lai and Shibata san. The collaboration has been scientifically enriching and rewarding. Let's keep it going!

2017/5/1

Chun Wai Kwan joins the lab!

2017/4/1

Antonio Bolea Albero joins the lab!

2016

2016/9/11

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the Japanese fly meeting, JDRC 12 , held at Rikkyo University in Tokyo.

2016/9/9 - 10

Anthony attended the RIKEN Summer School and brought back a poster award. Congrats!

2016/8/23 - 9/1

Yu-Chiun stayed at the Kavli Center for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara as a visitor for the From Genes to Growth and Form program and gave a talk there.

It was an intellectually stimulating week. Time spent at this seaside college town was well worth it and conversations had with people there were highly inspirational on how we think about the microtubule forces. Thanks so much to Drs. Madhav Mani and Boris Shraiman for the invitation.

2016/2/1

The Wang lab had Niraj's going away party.

It's sad to see you go. Best luck on your future endeavors. You will be sorely missed.

2015

2015/9/8

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the 26th CDB Meeting – Mechanistic Perspectives of Multicellular Organization at the CDB.

Thanks to Drs. Satoru Okuda and Daiki Umetsu for organizing the meeting and for the invitation!

2015/8/31

Percival Sangel departed from the lab.

Good luck on your future endeavors!

2015/3/24

Yu-Chiun was awarded the Young Investigator grant together with his collaborators Drs. Steffen Lemke and Zia Khan from Human Frontier Science Program.

The project aims at understanding the mechanism underlying the formation of a folded epithelial structure called the cephalic furrow that forms during the gastrulation of Drosophila embryonic development. Given that this structure is transitory, does not form a permanent organ and is evolutionarily novel, existing only in an advanced lineage of the dipteran flies, the team will seek to reveal its developmental function and evolutionary history. The announcement of the award was featured in a CDB news story.

2015/3/7

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the 56th Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago, USA.

During the same trip, he made a homecoming visit to his graduate Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, where he gave an informal seminar in the Department of Molecular, Genetics and Cell Biology. It was great to see friends and formal colleagues on the UofC campus and make a brief return to the US fly community after leaving it a year and half ago. Thanks to Drs. Chip Ferguson and Urs Schmidt-Ott for arranging the visit!

2015/4/1

Anthony starts his PhD study at Kobe university with Dr. Shigeo Hayashi as his official advisor.

He will be conducting his thesis research in our lab. Anthony is supported by the IPA program. Congratulations, Anthony!

2015/2/1

Anthony Eritano joins the lab!

2014

2014/11/17

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the 62nd NIBB Conference: Force in Development in Okazaki.

The whole Wang lab attended the meeting and thoroughly enjoyed it as a great educational opportunity as the topic of the meeting is highly relevant to us. Thanks to Dr. Naoto Ueno for the invitation!

2014/10/21

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the IGDB-KAIST-CDB joint symposium, Beijing, China.

Thanks to Dr. Shigeo Hayashi for organizing the event!

2014/9/1

Percival Sangel joins the lab!

2014/8/28

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the EMBL symposium: Epithelia: The Building Blocks of Multicellularity in Heidelberg, Germany.

2014/8/16

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the annual retreat of Taiwanese Society of Developmental Biology in Keelung, Taiwan...

... as a keynote speaker and gave another talk at his undergraduate Alma Mater, National Taiwan University in the Department of Life Sciences two days later. Thanks to Drs. Bon-Chu Chung and Shyh-Jye Jeff Lee for the invitation!

2014/6/12

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Cell Biology in Nara.

Thanks to Dr. Erina Kuranaga for the invitation!

2014/5/30

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biology in Nagoya.

Thanks to Dr. Shinji Ihara for the invitation!

2013

2013/12/1

Niraj Nirala joins the lab!

2013/11/25

Yu-Chiun gave a talk at the Quantitative Biology Workshop at Osaka University.

Thanks Dr. Miki Ebisuya for the invitation!

2013/10/1

The Wang lab began operation at the CDB!

Yuko Fujiyama, Mustafa Sami and Michiko Takeda are the founding members of the lab.