Jen and Stephanie have left the lab. Stephanie will be working as a Research Associate at Ancera in CT. Jen is heading back to San Francisco to look for a postdoc position. Good luck to both of them!

In her final doctoral examination, Jennifer gave a public presentation entitled “Intracellular Membrane Organization in Mycobacteria” and successfully defended her thesis. She gave a beautiful talk. Congratulations!!

A new paper from the Yamasaki Lab was just published in Immunity. In addition to Mincle and Dectin-2, Sho’s team now demonstrates DCAR as another lectin receptor that binds to mycobacterial glycolipids. I found it important that they used synthetic AcPIM2 to show the specific interaction. In addition to all the interesting immunological implications, the fact that heat-killed Mtb and BCG cells are recognized by DCAR implies that PIMs are surface-exposed (which I think is really nice).

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Yasu was invited to give a talk at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan.