11-11-22. Congratulations to Corey on his recent collaborative publication, Voltage imaging reveals the dynamic electrical signatures of human breast cancer cells Commun Biol. 2022 Nov 11;5(1):1178. doi: 10.1038/s42003-022-04077-2. Peter Quicke, Yilin Sun, Mar Arias-Garcia, Melina Beykou, Corey D Acker, Mustafa Djamgoz, Chris Bakal, Amanda J Foust. Recent studies at the Imperial College London and The Institute of Cancer Research, London uncovered large voltage fluctuations in breast cancer cells. Remarkably, these voltage fluctuations resemble very slow, upside-down versions of action potentials, which are electrical signals inherent in brain and heart cells. Voltage-sensitive dyes were provided by UConn’s start-up company Potentiometric Probes and Dr. Acker assisted with imaging methods, including ratiometric voltage imaging, to detect the voltage fluctuations reliably. The underlying mechanisms and role that these fluctuations might play in cells transitioning to being cancerous are intriguing open questions and avenues of future research.

Please read Imperial College London’s article on this new discovery, “Scientists uncover potential ‘electrical language’ of breast cancer cells“.

12-06-22. Congratulations to Ann on her recent publication, Liu, Y., E.M. Bafaro, A.E. Cowan, and R.E. Dempski. 2022. The transmembrane domains mediate oligomerization of the human ZIP4 transporter in vivo. Sci Rep. 12:21083. The work used Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS), performed in CCAM,  to determine the oligomerization state of wild-type or mutant zinc transporter protein ZIP4 in the plasma membrane.

09-12-22. Michael Blinov and Ion Moraru will give a VCell tutorial at the 21st International Conference on Systems Biology – the premier meeting on systems studies in biology, human evolution disease and planetary health. The meeting will take place in Berlin, Germany on October 8th-12th. The tutorial will be on October 9th at 12:30pm local time (https://www.icsb2022.berlin/satellite-events).

06-20-22 Congratulations to Dr. Paola Vera-Licona and Lauren Marazzi who recently published a paper in npj Systems Biology and Applications on NETISCE: a network-based tool for cell fate reprogramming. In this paper, they introduce NETISCE, a novel computational tool for identifying cell fate reprogramming targets in static networks. In combination with machine learning algorithms, NETISCE estimates the attractor landscape and predicts reprogramming targets using Signal Flow Analysis and Feedback Vertex Set Control, respectively.

06-28-2023. The 24th Annual on-site workshop on Computational Cell Modeling took place in Farmington for the 3 days, June 26-28. 11 participants across USA (from Maryland to Urbana-Champaign) came to develop their scientific projects using VCell and COPASI software tools. Students were helped by CCAM members –  Michael Blinov, Ann Cowan, Leslie Loew, Pedro Mendes, lon Moraru, Kelvin Perelson, Jim Schaff, Nathan Schaumburger, and Boris Slepchenko.