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| Tuesday, February 14, 2012
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12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
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4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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| Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
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11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
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Bioinformatics Seminar Series: Zooming out: New tools for probing the historical record and the human genome
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| Description: |
New structures often emerge when we explore a known phenomenon from a more global vantage point. For instance, any given book can be read and comprehended. But what happens when we try to read all the books at once? Or: the local structure of DNA is a double helix. But if DNA did not fold further, the human genome - which is two meters long - could never fit inside the nucleus of a cell. How does it fold? This talk will focus on the extraordinary potential of technologies that enable us to zoom out, in the process transforming familiar concepts, like the contents of a book or the shape of DNA, into new research horizons.
First, I will describe efforts, together with my collaborator Jean-Baptiste Michel and Google, to create tools for the quantitative analysis of a significant portion of the historical record. We began by constructing a reliable corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. 'Culturomics' provides insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. The Google Ngram Viewer, a simple web-based tool we released for the analysis of this corpus, was used over a million times in the first 24 hours. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
In the second half of my talk, I will describe Hi-C, a novel technology for probing the three-dimensional architecture of whole genomes. Developed together with collaborators at the Broad Institute and UMass Medical School, Hi-C couples proximity-dependent DNA ligation and massively parallel sequencing. My lab employs Hi-C to construct spatial proximity maps of the human genome. Hi-C maps have revealed that active and inactive portions of the human genome are spatially segregated, ie, that cells employ a sort of 'regulatory origami' as they turn genes on and off. At the megabase scale, the genomic fold is consistent with a fractal globule, a knot-free conformation that enables maximally dense packing while preserving the ability to easily fold and unfold any genomic locus.
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Patrice Macaluso
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Noon - 1:00 PM
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Introduction to Western Blot Principles and Troubleshooting
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This free webinar is hosted by a Western Blot expert who will explain and answer questions about:
Sample preparation
Electrophoresis
Transfer of proteins and staining
Controls
Troubleshooting
This Webinar will benefit anyone who is looking for a brief introduction, and to those who would like to refresh their technique.
Registration is free, but required.
http://www.abcam.com/index.html?pageconfig=resource&rid=14329
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Sarah Dolny
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6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
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"Autism in Infancy: Phenotypic Expression and Underlying Mechanisms"
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| Description: |
Katarzyna Chawarska, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry, Director, Toddler Developmental Disabilities Clinic, Yale University School of Medicine, Child Study Center
Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu
The Simons Center for the Social Brain Colloquium Series is a continuation of the Simons Initiative on Autism and the Brain’s Autism and Developmental Disorders Colloquium Series at MIT (web.mit.edu/autism)
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Lee Mavros Rushton
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| Thursday, February 16, 2012
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Noon - 1:00 PM
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Neuroscience, Aging, and Nutrition Lecture Series
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| Description: |
Please join us for the Special Lecture Series “Neuroscience, Aging, and Nutrition” co-sponsored by the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University and the Tufts School of Medicine Neuroscience Department. The final Lecture will be held on Thursday February 16, 2012 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Jean Mayer USDA HNRCA located at 711 Washington Street, Boston, MA. This is the last of six presentations in this special Lecture Series.
The “Neuroscience, Aging, and Nutrition Lecture Series” was created to celebrate the HNRCA’s new neuroscience and aging laboratory and to promote collaborations in the neuroscience research area.
Lecture #6: “Blunting Inflammation in the Aging Brain: Using Natural Products to Modulate Lipid Raft Signaling"
Speaker: Thomas B. Kuhn, PhD: Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Neuroscience, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Host: Dr. Sarah Booth, Associate Director, HNRCA
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Meghan Faherty
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| Friday, February 17, 2012
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8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
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Cheese microbial communities
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| Description: |
MSI Weekly Chalktalk. Please join us for coffee/tea and pastries at 8:30, followed by the chalktalk at 8:45AM.
Speaker: Rachel Dutton (FAS-Center for Systems Biology)
Location: Harvard Center for the Environment (HUCE), 24 Oxford St, 3rd Floor, Room 310
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Andrea Lenco
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12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
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How did our adaptive immune system evolve?
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| Description: |
Max D. Cooper, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar
Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine
Fred S. Rosen Conference Room, CLSB 3069, Immune Disease Institute, 3 Blackfan Circle
Hosted by: Fred Alt
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Zac DiPasquale
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Week of Sunday, February 12, 2012
