Biomedical Sciences grad student wins award at 12th International Fission Yeasts meeting
Everett Glower, a fourth-year biomedical sciences graduate student in Assistant Professor Benjamin Roche’s lab, won a poster award at the recent 12th International Fission Yeasts Meeting in Boston, Mass. Glower’s award winning poster was entitled “The Knob submodule of the mediator complex is essential for maintaining transcription initiation during quiescence.”
In the lab, Glower assists Dr. Roche in his effort to understand the biology maintaining cellular quiescence (or “cellular sleep”), a state universal in nature and essential for the proper function of most tissues in the human body.
Roche’s lab team has “identified specific, conserved, components of the transcriptional machinery as becoming essential only during quiescence,” the researcher said. “This sheds light on how cellular sleep, far from being an inactive state, requires a constant, low level of activity to maintain its viability, and the mechanisms involved. One of the most promising directions of this research is that we have now identified new targets to fight against dormant cancer cells, which use the quiescent state to escape chemotherapy and the patients’ immune system.”
During the event, Glower received his award from Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse!
