Monthly Archives: February 2012

2012 “Science Parody of the Year”

I’m excited to announce that the “Science Parody of the Year” for 2012 is “Grad School, I Love You (But You’re Bringin’ Me Down).” The song is parody of an LCD Soundsystem song written and performed by Mark Grabiner (a graduate student in Terry Machen’s lab at UC-Berkeley). The video was directed and produced by Nate Krefman, a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes lab. The scientific journal BioTechniques put the “Science Parody of the Year” to a readers’ vote this week on their blog.

A second song by Nate, “Blue and Yellow,” a parody of a Wiz Khalifa song, was also among this year’s five nominees. These nominations follow on the heals two additional nominations for Nate’s videos “I’m Bringin’ Stickleback” and “Bad Habits (in Lab)” in the 2011 contest. All of the videos were produced for an annual funny movie event called MCB Follies held by graduate students in UC-Berkeley’s Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. Readers can expect to see more of these sort of videos from Nate and other graduate students in the Drubin/Barnes lab in the future.

2012 “Science Parody of the Year”:

Journal Club on Wednesday, February 20

For our next Journal Club, Akemi Kunibe will be presenting the following paper:

Membrane Tension Maintains Cell Polarity by Confining Signals to the Leading Edge during Neutrophil Migration. Houk AR, Jilkine A, Mejean CO, Boltyanskiy R, Dufresne ER, Angenent SB, Altschuler SJ, Wu LF, Weiner OD. Cell. 2012 Jan 20;148(1-2):175-88. PMID: 22265410

Nominated for 2012 “Science Parody of the Year” by BioTechniques Journal

Click on the image below to visit the BioTechniques Blog and vote for “Blue and Yellow (FRET)” or “Grad School, I Love You (But You’re Bringin’ Me Down)” for “Science Parody of the Year”:

These videos were produced for MCB Follies in 2011 by a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes Lab, Nate Krefman.  Thank you for your vote, and best of luck to the other nominees!

– Nate

Journal Club on Monday, February 6

For our next Journal Club, Jasper Weinberg will be presenting the following paper:

A molecular switch on an arrestin-like protein relays glucose signaling to transporter endocytosis.  Becuwe M, Vieira N, Lara D, Gomes-Rezende J, Soares-Cunha C, Casal M, Haguenauer-Tsapis R, Vincent O, Paiva S, Léon S.  J Cell Biol. 2012 Jan 23;196(2):247-59.  PMID: 22249293