Janahan Advances

Congratulations to Janahan Arulmoli for passing his Qualifying Exams.  He is OFFICIALLY a Ph.D. candidate.  The lab celebrated with him at the Anteater Pub.  See the Research Projects page to learn more about his project investigating 3D scaffolds.
… only a few dozen experiments to go until “Dr. Janahan Arulmoli”!

Dr. Nourse’s paper is published in “Stem Cells”!

Dr. Jami Nourse had her recent paper “Membrane biophysics define neuron and astrocyte progenitors in the neural lineage” accepted by Stem Cells. The project was in partnership with Dr. Michael Demetriou and our collaborators from Biomedical Engineering (Dr. Abe Lee), and Physiology and Biophysics (Dr. Francesco Tombola and Dr. Medha Pathak). Nice work team!   

The publication is available through Wiley Online Library.  Read the abstract below:

Neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs) are heterogeneous populations of self-renewing stem cells and more committed progenitors that differentiate into neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Accurately identifying and characterizing the different progenitor cells in this lineage has continued to be a challenge for the field. We found previously that populations of NSPCs with more neurogenic progenitors (NPs) can be distinguished from those with more astrogenic progenitors (APs) by their inherent biophysical properties, specifically the electrophysiological property of whole cell membrane capacitance, which we characterized with dielectrophoresis (DEP). Here we hypothesize that inherent electrophysiological properties are sufficient to define NPs and APs and test this by determining whether isolation of cells solely by these properties specifically separates NPs and APs. We found NPs and APs are enriched in distinct fractions after separation by electrophysiological properties using DEP. A single round of DEP isolation provided greater NP enrichment than sorting with PSA-NCAM, which is considered an NP marker. Additionally, cell surface N-linked glycosylation was found to significantly affect cell fate-specific electrophysiological properties, providing a molecular basis for the cell membrane characteristics. Inherent plasma membrane biophysical properties are thus sufficient to define progenitor cells of differing fate potential in the neural lineage, can be used to specifically isolate these cells, and are linked to patterns of glycosylation on the cell surface. Stem Cells 2013.

Congratulations Graduates!

Many congratulations to Adnan Akil and Ying Li on the successful completion of their Masters program!  Both students worked tirelessly to make headway on some very interesting, but challenging, projects.  We wish you all the best in your next adventure!

The Great Bowling Escapade of 2013

We had a fabulous lab adventure to Irvine Lanes this Spring and were joined by some fierce competitors from the Monuki Lab.  There was heckling and hotdogs, and sodas and strikes!  Congratulations to all the bowlers on Lane 13 who took home the prize for most points scored!  Lane 14 challenges you to a rematch over the summer!

Lab Adventure at Irvine Lanes!
Lab Adventure at Irvine Lanes!

 

Christina Huang takes 3rd Place at Science Fair!

Christina Huang Poster
Christina Huang taking 3rd Place at the Science Fair!

A very dedicated (and brave) high-school Sophomore, Christina Huang, completed her science fair project with our lab.  She developed and analyzed the physical properties of a novel 3D matrix for neural stem cells and assessed cell viability and growth within the matrix.  A job well done!

Flanagan Lab Clean-up Day!

We had a ton of fun at the Annual Flanagan Lab Clean-up Day!  We got to clean out the walk-in fridge, sanitize incubators, defrost freezers, AND…. (drum-roll please) MAKE SNOWMEN!  Ying and Adnan demonstrated the proper construction of snowmen using cotton swabs, pipet tips, and “snow” from the -80!

Many thanks to our fearless-leader for feeding us and to all the lab members who scrubbed and mopped all day long!  The lab looks fabulous!

Adnan (L) and Ying (C) and their “snow”men (R)!

John Louie presents SURF-IT Project

CalIT2 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology (SURF-IT) student, John Louie, presented his findings at the end of the summer at the SURF-IT symposium. John modeled different variables to advance understanding in why and how cells experience DEP forces.  Congratulations on a job well done!

Flanagan’s Angels!! Photo courtesy of Calit2@UCI publication: Interface (Fall 2010).

Welcome New Students!

Welcome to Adnan Akil and Ying Li. They will be joining our lab as second year Master students. Adnan’s projects will be focusing on DEP devices and Ying’s projects will focus on fate potential and differentiation of DEP-sorted cell populations.

Jente Lu’s paper is selected for publication!

Flanagan Lab Alumni Jente Lu, Chesca Barrios, and Amanda Dickson, current member Jami Nourse along with Lisa Flanagan and BioMiNT collaborator, Abe Lee, recently published “Advancing practical usage of microtechnology: a study of the functional consequences of dielectrophoresis on neural stem cells” in Integrative Biology.  Many thanks to our collaborator, Abe Leeand our dedicated PI, Lisa Flanagan for their tireless assistance and guidance!

The abstract and full text of the article can be found at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ib/c2ib20171b#!divAbstract.  Happy reading!