Each September, the MCB community gathers for their research retreat, where community members can learn about each other’s research, have fun, meet incoming graduate students and other community members who are new to the department, and build relationships with their colleagues. This year, the retreat took place September 20 and 21 in North Falmouth on Cape Cod. MCB faculty Florian Engert and former Engert Lab postdoc Dániel Barabási, who is now an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the Broad Institute, were so dedicated that they biked all the way from Cambridge down to the Cape. Despite the rainy weather, new bonds were formed, and researchers exchanged ideas.
Over the two days of the retreat, MCB undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty gave talks about their research and presented posters and recent data. Recreational highlights of the weekend included a dance party, board game night, and a community trivia contest. The trivia night was created and hosted by MCB Community Task Force members Arshia Mostoufi (MCO G2) and postdoc Stan Lazopulo. Science writer Lucy Cooke, who recently authored the book Bitch: On the Female of the Species, delivered a keynote speech on Friday. In honor of the rainy weather, ponchos were distributed.
Download this year’s group photo (PDF)
The traditional beach volleyball game between the MCO G1s and the faculty was rained out. Instead, the match will take place on the volleyball court in front of BioLabs this Friday at 5 PM.
The retreat also featured an awards ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of MCB community members. To learn more about the honorees, read on.
(l to r) Juan Orozco, Hannah McCalmon, and Melissa Tian
T-Shirt Design Contest
This year, community members were challenged to create potential t-shirt designs featuring model organisms. The winning design by MCO graduate student Juan Orozco of the Nett Lab appears on the retreat t-shirts. Second place went to graduate student Hannah McCalmon of the Murthy Lab, and third place went to research assistant Melissa Tian of the Uchida Lab.
Katelyn Comeau Boulanger
Peralta Prize
The Peralta Prize celebrates graduate students who compose essays explaining their research to a general audience. The award is named for MCB professor Ernest Peralta (1959-1999).
This year the Peralta Prize went to MCO graduate student Katelyn Comeau Boulanger of the Goodrich Lab at HMS. Her essay is titled “Lending a Sympathetic Ear: Neuroimmune Interactions in Inner Ear Infections.” The Goodrich Lab’s mission is to investigate the molecular mechanisms shaping auditory development. Boulanger first became interested in sensory biology while working as a research assistant in David Ginty’s lab at HMS and continued to pursue that curiosity as an MCO graduate student.
In the Goodrich Lab, Boulanger is studying how sympathetic neurons in the inner ear interact with the local macrophage immune cells. “My anatomical studies have identified where the cell bodies of inner ear-innervating sympathetic neurons are, and that their putative release sites in the cochlea are closely apposed to macrophages,” she writes. “Thus, they seem to be ideally positioned to influence the activity of inner ear macrophages. Indeed, my preliminary live imaging experiments suggest the addition of noradrenaline, the sympathetic neuron neurotransmitter, may affect the motility of cochlear macrophages after application of inactivated bacteria, which models infection. This has led me to hypothesize that cochlear immune responses are coordinated in part by the sympathetic neurons in such a way that impacts hearing integrity.”
“I am incredibly honored to receive the Peralta Prize for my essay,” Boulanger says. “I have always enjoyed writing, and it was really a fun process of thinking through how to convey my research to a more general background. I hope that readers come away with an appreciation for how cool the emerging fields of neuroimmunology (communication between nervous and immune systems) and brain-body physiology are (how central nervous system function is influenced by peripheral physiology and vice versa).”
She adds, “I think we all have a responsibility of being able to convey the goals and findings of our research to broader audiences. It not only serves to inform the general public of the current aims in research, but to inspire future generations of scientists who might be listening.”
Gregor Schuhknecht (l) and Dániel Barabási
Meselson Prize for Most Beautiful Experiment
The Meselson Prize recognizes MCB researchers who design and conduct exceptionally elegant experiments. The prize’s namesake is MCB faculty Matthew Meselson, who along with colleague Franklin Stahl, demonstrated the semi-conservative nature of DNA replication in 1958.
This year’s Meselson Prize went to Engert Lab postdocs Dániel Barabási and Gregor Schuhknecht. Barabási has since become an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the Broad Institute. “I first learned about the Meselson-Stahl experiment during my biology class in high school in Germany, when I was about 17 or 18 years old,” says Schuhknecht. “I still remember that I was struck by the experiment’s elegance, its simplicity, and the insights it offered into the workings of life—and I realized how fascinating scientific research can be. For me, it is an incredible honor to receive an award in their name for our work done here at Harvard.”
The two postdocs wanted to find out whether the nervous system can wire itself in the absence of neural firing signals. “Through a series of computational works, I had made a surprising prediction: There is sufficient information in neural development to specify the connections and weights of every neuron, even in the human brain,” says Barabási. “To test this rather controversial statement, I looked for a system where I could remove any and all neural activity, and show that experience-independent development was sufficient to wire up a complex behavior.”
The prevailing wisdom in neuroscience has been that neural firing governs neural wiring, but much to the postdocs’ surprise, the anesthetized zebrafish larvae developed normal and complete neural wiring. When they stopped the anesthesia, the zebrafish were able to perform the same tasks that typically raised fish can do. “After the washout of the drug, the animals behaved just like their normally-raised siblings, despite missing days of experience they may have learned from!” Barabási.says. “Thusly, we found that while nature and nurture remain intertwined in an intricate dance, the blueprint for survival is deeply embedded within our genes.”
Barabási and Schuhknecht plan to follow up with connectomic analyses investigating variability in microcircuits before and after learning.
Save the Date
Next year’s MCB Research Retreat will take place September 19 and 20, 2025.
