Trainee Journal Club

The Center for Multiscale & Translational Mechanobiology hosts several Journal Club meetings during the Fall and Spring semesters, as well as monthly meetings during the Summer semester, that are open to all students and postdoctoral associates at Boston University.  Trainee presenters from two CMTM-affiliated faculty labs work together to chose a recently published academic paper on the topic of mechanobiology to present and discuss at meetings, with an emphasis on papers that bridge together different fields of study including mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry, systems biology, biomedical engineering, orthopedics, physiology, biomechanics, computational science, cell biology, materials science, and more.

All journal club meetings take place on campus, in-person, with food and beverages, and include a social component with games and prizes.  Two students each year serve as Trainee Leaders to help with meeting planning and recruitment for journal club and other trainee events, and to promote a fun, friendly, casual environment among trainees.  New leaders will be chosen each summer for the following academic year.  This year’s leaders are graduate students Emma Stowe, who works in the Connizzo Lab, and Gabrielle Grifno, who works in the Nia Lab.  Thank you for your leadership, Emma and Gabby!

For information about attending an upcoming Trainee Journal Club meeting, or if you are interested in becoming one of our next trainee leaders, please contact mechanobiology@bu.edu, or visit our events calendar!

Jesse D. Rogers, Jeffrey W. Holmes, Jeffrey J. Saucerman, William J. Richardson, Mechano-chemo signaling interactions modulate matrix production by cardiac fibroblasts, Matrix Biology Plus, Volume 10, 2021, 100055, ISSN 2590-0285, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mbplus.2020.100055. – Presented by Matthew Lim and Matthew Sumkulet, March 2023.
 
Townsend, K., Imbert, I., Eaton, V., Stevenson, G., King, T. Voluntary exercise blocks ongoing pain and diminishes bone remodeling while sparing protective mechanical pain in a rat model of advanced osteoarthritis pain. PAIN (2022); doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002392. – Presented by Timothy Josephson and Souyoun Lee, April 2022.
 
Yang, Q., Xue, SL., Chan, C.J. et al. Cell fate coordinates mechano-osmotic forces in intestinal crypt formation. Nat Cell Biol (2021); doi:10.1038/s41556-021-00700-2. – Presented by Marina Uroz Marimon and Emma Jilk Stowe, July 2021.
 
Ollech D, Pflästerer T, Shellard A, Zambarda C, Spatz JP, Marcq P, Mayor R, Wombacher R, Cavalcanti-Adam EA. An optochemical tool for light-induced dissociation of adherens junctions to control mechanical coupling between cells. Nature Communication 2020; doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14390. – Presented by Yuhei Uda and Noshin Nawar, April 2021.
 
González-Vázquez A, Raftery RM, Günbay S, Chen G, Murray DJ, O’Brien FJ. Accelerating bone healing in vivo by harnessing the age-altered activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase 3. J. Biomaterials 2021; doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2020.120540. – Presented by Ziwen Yuan and Sedat Sogru, February 2021.
 
Thompson AJ, Pillai EK, Dimov IB, Foster SK, Holt CE, Franze K. Rapid changes in tissue mechanics regulate cell behaviour in the developing embryonic brain. eLife 2019; 8:e39356 doi: 10.7554/eLife.39356. – Presented by Jeremy Tran and Sam Halvorson, January 2021.