Cell biology hits the red carpet

Jan Schmoranzer looks like the typical postdoc: longish hair, glasses, a slightly rumpled button-down shirt. Standing in front of a packed crowd of attendees of this year's American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting in Washington, DC, Schmoranzer introduced the four-minute-long movie that got him here. The Columbia University scientist earned one of the ASCB Celldance 2007 Awards, presented last week. His movie Cell Portraits, which received an Honorable Mention, stars him as he goes through the drudgery of his day: Walking through tiny hallways to reach his tucked-away lab, scooping ice chips, heating up his lunch. "There's no scientific information whatsoever," Schmoranzer jokes. The point of the movie, he explains, is to show non-scientists what a typical day in the lab looks like. "Scientists are humans." At the end of the movie, however, a series of beautiful images scroll by, demonstrating that Schmoranzer's seemingly mundane lab work is anything but. First and second place prizes both went to scientists at the University of Washington. In first place, Jason Stumpff earned $500 for four short black and white films which depict the frenetic -- but elegant -- kinetochore movements during mitosis. (Anaphase Kinetochore Movements, Kinetochores Fail to Align, Metaphase Kinetochore Dynamics, No Waiting for Anaphase.)Kathleen Rankin took home second place (and $300) for a series of three movies about HeLa cells whose red spindle and green myosin perform intricate dances during anaphase. (Anaphase Spindle Oscillations in HeLa Cell Depleted of MCAK, Anaphase Spindle Oscillations of HeLa Cells Depleted of MCAK, Anaphase Spindle Oscillations of HeLa Cells Depleted of MCAK with Cytokinesis Failure.)Third place, which came with a $200 check, went to Michael Veeman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The charming movie, Ascidian Notochord Boundary Morphogenesis, began with a quote from interviewer David Attenborough, who once said he believed it was "difficult to get some drama out of a sea squirt." With background music shifting constantly between genres, including jazz and banjo, Veeman presented a series of compelling images about notochord morphogenesis that corresponds to his Development paper published online in November.ASCB awarded two more Honorable Mentions, to Gonzalo Mardones (Dancing Spaghetti, Traffic Jam, and GFP-Rab5a-containing Endosomes Movement), a postdoc at NICHD\NIH; and Steve Paddock (Time Flies When You're Having Fun), a HHMI researcher based at the University of Wisconsin. Alison McCook mail@the-scientist.comLinks within this article:I. Ganguli, "A lab goes to Hollywood," The Scientist, March 1, 2006. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23150/J. Schmoranzer, Cell Portraits, The American Society for Cell Biology, 2005-2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/J. Stumpff, Anaphase Kinetochore Movements, The American Society for Cell Biology, Aug. 20, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/J. Stumpff, Kinetochores Fail to Align, The American Society for Cell Biology, Aug. 18, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/J. Stumpff, Metaphase Kinetochore Dynamics, The American Society for Cell Biology, Aug. 20, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/J. Stumpff, No Waiting for Anaphase, The American Society for Cell Biology, Feb. 18, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/K. Rankin, Anaphase Spindle Oscillations in HeLa Cell Depleted of MCAK, The American Society for Cell Biology, June 4, 2006. http://cellimages.ascb.org/K. Rankin, Anaphase Spindle Oscillations of HeLa Cells Depleted of MCAK, The American Society for Cell Biology, May 30, 2006. http://cellimages.ascb.org/K. Rankin, Anaphase Spindle Oscillations of HeLa Cells Depleted of MCAK with Cytokinesis Failure, The American Society for Cell Biology, Sept. 18, 2006. http://cellimages.ascb.org/M. Veeman, Ascidian Notochord Boundary Morphogenesis, The American Society for Cell Biology, Sept. 27, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/M. Veeman et al, "chongmague reveals an essential role for laminin-mediated boundary formation in chordate convergence and extension movements," Development, published online Nov. 21, 2007. http://dev.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/dev.010892v1G. Mardones, Dancing Spaghetti, The American Society for Cell Biology, July 15, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/G. Mardones, Traffic Jam, The American Society for Cell Biology, July 15, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/G. Mardones, GFP-Rab5a-containing Endosomes Movement, The American Society for Cell Biology, May 16, 2006. http://cellimages.ascb.org/S. Paddock, Time Flies When You're Having Fun, Sept. 27, 2007. http://cellimages.ascb.org/

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