Jonathon's Really Cool Scientific Mumbo-Jumbo

Jonathon has been working really hard over the last few months to tie up some loose ends in his research. He has been trying to publish three papers for the last year. He was often frustrated by the long process, but we were finally able to see the fruits of his labors. Within 2 a two-week span in November, he received the news that all three of his papers were going to be published in various scientific journals. It was an exciting time! There was some prep work that had to be done to finalize the articles for publication, but now all three papers are available to read. (They are very interesting to the scientific community, but I am going to warn you right now that they are extremely difficult for the lay person to understand... so read the links only if you dare.)

I am so proud of Jonathon and his patience during this long process. This brings his total number of publications to 6, which is a great number for a Postdoc. He continues to work hard to progress to the next step in his career (get a professorship at a university). I don't talk about him enough, but he is pretty amazing!

Here are the titles and brief summaries of his latest 3 papers...

Ghrelin expression in the mouse pancreas defines a unique multipotent progenitor population: This was a project from Jonathon's graduate work that another person took over when he left Columbia. The lab had previously identified a cell type in the pancreas that is only present in the embryo. These cells mysteriously disappear after birth and nobody knew where they went. Jonathon discovered that they actually turn into another cell type. 

To read this really cool (but highly technical) mumbo-jumbo, click here.

Genome-wide Analysis Reveals the Unique Stem Cell Identity of Human Amniocytes: Another postdoc in Jonathon's lab is working to characterize what genes are turned on and off in Amniocytes. Amniocytes are cells from a fetus that are floating in the amniotic fluid. The hope is that they can one day be used as a source of stem cells to treat birth defects. Jonathon helped the other postdoc collect RNA and analyze the data. 

To read this really cool (but hardest to read of the three) mumbo-jumbo, click here.

MMAPPR: Mutation Mapping Analysis Pipeline for Pooled RNA-seq: Researchers often give animals chemicals that cause random mutations in their DNA, and then they screen their offspring to see if the mutation caused a defect. They then have to go back to try to figure out what gene was mutated. This can take years. Jonathon developed a computer program that identifies the specific mutation a lot faster. 

His MMAPPR program has turned out to be a lot cooler than Jonathon realized, as shown by the following:

• Jonathon's PI (Professor that is the head of his lab) gave a talk on Jonathon's work at a national conference, and it generated so much interest that his article jumped to number 7 on the top 10 articles in the journal Genome Research.
• His article was also highlighted in Nature Genetics Reviews. It is always a big deal when another journal thinks your research is interesting enough to talk about.
• Jonathon gave a talk on his research at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology on February 15th. His talk garnered high praise and won BEST Postdoctoral Fellow presentation. The prize for his success was a trip to Cancun to present at the International Congress of Developmental Biology in June. Yay Jonathon!

To read this really cool mumbo-jumbo, click here.