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MCB Seminar for Dr. Orlando Argüello-Miranda

May 19, 2021 - 9:15am

The School of Natural Sciences

Presents

The most crucial decision in life: Proliferation or Quiescence?

Orlando Argüello-Miranda, Ph.D.

Department of Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

DETAILS:

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021

9:15am-10:15am

To Zoom in, please use this link: https://ucmerced.zoom.us/j/85189739974

ABSTRACT:

“Cellular quiescence” is one the most confusing concepts in contemporaneous cell biology. Quiescence is defined as a “reversible arrest of proliferation” which includes all sorts of non-proliferative states such as dormancy, G2-stalling, G1/G0 arrest, and developmentally controlled cell cycle pauses. Furthermore, even in isogenic populations, different quiescent states occur in response to stress or developmental stimuli. Such diversity of non-proliferative states is at the core of a wide range of biomedically relevant biological scenarios, such as the higher antibiotic resistance in quiescent microorganisms or the maintenance of quiescent adult stem cells in our bodies. However, it has been difficult to quantitatively characterize quiescent states due to their single-cell biochemical heterogeneity. In this talk, I will illustrate how the combination of data science and biochemistry creates prolific tools to characterize the molecular mechanisms that control the establishment of quiescent states and how this approach could provide a universal definition of cellular quiescence.   

 

BIOGRAPHY:

 

Orlando Argüello-Miranda grew up in the rainforests of Costa Rica. After receiving a B.Sc. from the National University, he moved to Germany to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology in (Dresden) and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (Munich). His doctoral work discovered an E3-ubiquitin-ligase-mediated proteolytic system for cellular decision-making between different cell division programs, such as mitosis or meiosis. For his postdoctoral work, Orlando moved to Texas and changed biochemistry for computational biology. He has developed innovative single-cell approaches based on microfluidics and machine learning-driven image analysis to study cellular quiescence, which earned him a K99 Pathway to Independence Award (NIGMS) in 2020. When not in the lab, Orlando writes Asimov/Vonnegut-influenced science fiction. Publication Profile

 

For more information, please contact:

Prof. Mike Cleary at mcleary4@ucmerced.edu.