Monthly Archives: January 2013

37 Degrees perform “I Want to Graduate” live at MCB Follies!

Synthetic boy band 37 Degrees made a surprise live performance at MCB Follies this year.  Before a screaming hoard of desperate graduate students, 37 Degrees performed their new single “I Want to Graduate.”  You may recognize the song as a parody of the Backstreet Boys single “I Want it That Way.”

You may also recognize one of the members of 37 Degrees as Nate Krefman, a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes Lab!  The other participants in this transient complex are fellow MCB graduate students Phil Cleves and Andrew Glazer from Craig Miller’s Lab (also from “I’m Bringin’ Stickleback”), Alec Sexton from Cathy Collins’ Lab (also from “Grad School Pressure”), and Brock Roberts from Henk Roelink’s Lab (also from “Vol II: How to Do a DNA Mini-Prep (Molecular and Cell Biology Training Video Series”).

37 DEGREES is Nate Krefman, Phil Cleves, Andrew Glazer, Alec Sexton, & Brock Roberts

CONCEPT: Meru S.
LYRICS: Meru S. & Nate Krefman
PRE-RECORDED VOCALS: Nate Krefman
LIVE VOCALS: 37 Degrees
CAMERA: David McCleary
SLIDESHOW & VIDEO EDITING: Nate Krefman

________________________________________________

LYRICS:

Nate:
It is my fire —
my one desire.
Believe when I say:
I want to graduate.

Phil:
But we are two worlds apart,
Just years from the start.
It’s your fate:
You’ll never graduate.

All:
Tell me when…
I’m begging my committee.
Tell me when…
Be in grad school till I’m fifty.
Tell me when…
You never wanna hear me say:
I want to graduate

Andrew:
It will be so wrong,
If this just goes on.
Please don’t come too late.
Cuz I want to graduate.

All:
Tell me when…
All my friends are wearing Polo.
Tell me when…
But I’m still dressing like a hobo.
Tell me when…
You never wanna hear me say:
I want to graduate.

Phil:
Now I can see that you wanna depart —
But not if it’s up to me. Yeah.
No matter your progress,
I want you to know,
There’s no way you’ll ever leave.

Alec:
It is my fire —
My one desire.

Nate:
Ph.D…
Andrew:
Ph.D…
Alec:
Ph.D…
Brock:
Ph.D…
Phil:
You never hear me!

All:
I’m ready for my thesis.
I could even do a defense.
I never wanna hear you say:
You’ll never graduate.

All:
Tell me when…
This stipend ain’t a salary.
Tell me when…
I wanna get better pay.
Tell me when…
You never wanna hear me say:
I want to graduate.

Nate:
Cuz I want to graduate…

Life here in the UC is much better than anything they got out there!

Members of the Drubin/Barnes Lab and others collaborated this month to create musical magic (or madness?) in the form a parody of the musical number “Under the Sea” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.  The video was a submission for UC-Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology‘s annual funny movie event MCB Follies.

We hope you enjoy it!

CONCEPT: Akemi Kunibe

LYRICS: Eric Lewellyn

VOCALS: Nathaniel Krefman

BACKING VOCALS: Sun Hae Hong & Akemi Kunibe

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Akemi Kunibe, Jeff Woodruff, & Eric Lewellyn

EDITING: Jasper Weinberg & Akemi Kunibe

STARRING: Eric Lewellyn, Rebecca Lu, & Jasper Weinberg

CAST (in order of appearance): Rebecca Lu, Jasper Weinberg, Eric Lewellyn, Jeff Woodruff, Akemi Kunibe, Kathryn Sievert, Adrienne Greene, Sun Hae hong, Benjamin Gowen, Wendy Ingram, Kevin Barry, Caitlin DeJong, aileen Kelly, Caitlin Shartner, Christopher Alvaro, Jennifer Cisson, Nathaniel Krefman, Colin Cerretani, Thomas Burke, Julia Durack, Christina Glazier, & Michelle Reniere

________________________________________________

LYRICS:

Private industry, it’s a mess. Life here in the UC Berkeley is much better than anything they got out there.

The money is always greener,
In some private company.
You quit you could be a tech there,
But you would be sad you’ll see.
Just look at the world around you,
Right here through the lab room door.
Such wonderful things surround you.
What more is you lookin’ for?

In the UC!
In the UC!
Darling it’s better,
Grab your pipetter,
Come follow me!
Here you can surf for half the day.
With a real job you’ll slave away.
Ya we be chillin’.
Time we be killin’.
In the UC!

Right here all the postdoc happy.
They follow where research go.
The industry doc ain’t happy —
They feel like they sold their soul.
But doc with a job is lucky —
They in for a worser fate:
One day when the boss sell company,
Guess who eatin’ ramen plate!
Uh Oh!

In the UC!
In The UC!
We doin’ science.
We not some appliance,
for makin’ money.
They got a team of robots manned.
We got the Zen of workin’ by hand.
We got no worries,
Troubles or hurries,
In the UC!
In the UC!
Each protein gel here,
Runnin’ so well here,
Bands are so clean.
Even though takin’ lots of class,
Can be a real pain in the ass,
While we be learnin’,
money be earning,
In the UC!

The tub is the bass,
the drum is the flask,
the beakers are good,
for most any task.
Our science is play.
We do every day,
Like Nate, who’s the Duke of Clone.
Yeah!
He put DNA,
In cells on the plate.
The sequence is good.
There ain’t no debate.
Right here where it’s at,
Our microscope phat.
An’ oh that protein glow!

In the UC!
In the UC!
No scientist here,
Like to get pissed here,
You will agree.
We got a campus full a perks.
They got a boardroom full of rich jerks.
Each undergrad here,
Learning like mad here.
In the UC!
None of our tech here,
is pain in the neck here.
In the UC!
Each PI swell here.
Get the Nobel here.
Publish in Science,
Nature, and Cell here.
Stay academic.
The fun is pandemic!
In the UC!

Journal Club on Monday, Feb. 7

For our Journal Club on February 7, Yansong Miao will present the following paper:

Rocket launcher mechanism of collaborative actin assembly defined by single-molecule imaging. Breitsprecher D, Jaiswal R, Bombardier JP, Gould CJ, Gelles J, Goode BL. Science. 2012 Jun 1;336(6085):1164-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1218062. PMID: 22654058

Proposed ‘rocket launcher’ model for mDia1-APC collaboration during actin filament assembly

The Drubin/Barnes Lab Has a New Theme Song!

We now present to you a brand new theme song to introduce the world to all of the awesome people in the Drubin/Barnes Lab!

The Drubin-Barnes Lab!
(Parody of The Brady Bunch Theme Song)

Submission for UC-Berkeley MCB Follies 2012-2013
(UC-Berkeley, Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology)

LYRICS, VOCALS, CAMERA, EDITING:  Nathaniel Krefman

ADDITIONAL VOCALS:  Akemi Kunibe

STARRING:  The Drubin/Barnes Lab at UC-Berkeley (Fall 2012)!

PIs:  Profs. David Drubin and Georjana Barnes

1st GROUP (microtubules, spindles, kinetochores, & mitosis in budding yeast):  Adrianne Pigula (top left), Nathaniel Krefman (center left), Itziar Ibarlucea-Benitez (bottom left), Prof. Georjana Barnes (center), Anthony Cormier (center right)

2nd GROUP (actin cytoskeleton and endocytosis in mammalian cells and budding yeast):  Aaron Cheng (top left square, left), Jasper Weinberg (top left square, right), Rebecca Lu (center left square, left), Lillie Cohn (center left square, center), Akemi Kunibe (center left square, right), Yansong Miao (bottom left square), Prof. David Drubin (center square), Sun Hae Hong (top right square, left), Yidi Sun (top right square, right), Alex Grassart (center right square, left), Daphne Dambournet (center right square, right), Christa Cortesio (bottom right square, left), Eric Lewellyn (bottom right square, right).

________________________________________________

LYRICS:

Here’s the story of a lovely lady.
Who studied what a microtubule’s for.
All her group loves mitosis, like Georjana,
And kinetochores.

Here’s the story of a PI named David,
Who was interested in actin in live cells,
And his group mapped endocytosis dynamics,
Yet they were by themselves.

After their post-docs, where the lady met this fellow,
And named a protein complex DAM instead of DARN,
They knew their groups must form one laboratory.
That’s the way our lab became the Drubin/Barnes!
The Drubin/Barnes!

That’s the way our lab became the Drubin/Barnes!

Journal Club on Monday, January 7

For our Journal Club on January 7, Yidi Sun presented the following paper:

PtdIns4P synthesis by PI4KIIIα at the plasma membrane and its impact on plasma membrane identity.  Nakatsu F, Baskin JM, Chung J, Tanner LB, Shui G, Lee SY, Pirruccello M, Hao M, Ingolia NT, Wenk MR, De Camilli P.  J Cell Biol. 2012 Dec 10;199(6):1003-16.  PMID:  23229899.

PtdIns(4,5)P2-positive intracellular vesicles, visualized with GFP- or RFP-PHPLCδ, colocalize with endocytic clathrin machinery components (endogenous AP-2, epsin 1, and dynamin 2–GFP) but not with markers of endosomes (endogenous EEA1, GFP-Rab5, and GFP-Rab9), the endosomal phosphoinositide PtdIns3P (GFP-2×FYVEHrs), and Golgi-localized PtdIns4P (GFP-PHOSBP). For clarity, PHPLCδ is false colored green, and the second marker is false colored red in all images.