Science writing

Fleet Science Center Blog

Red blood cells, large and small! Read here.

Association for Women in Science – San Diego Newsletter

2019 Greater San Diego Science & Engineering Fair Judging Read here.

Member Profile: Dorothy Sears Read here.

Postdoc Open Mic Night Read here.

Member Profile: Corine Lau Read here.

Since January 2016, I have contributed a News Ticker with short summaries of local science, biotech, and education news to this newsletter. Find examples in past newsletter editions here.

ASBMB Today

Torres honored for decades dedicated to diversity in science Read here.

Seeking new techniques to track protein breakdown Read here.

Calculating the protein-evolution connection Read here.

San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) Blog

SANDSWA member tour Palomar Observatory Read here.

Meet Monica May, SANDSWA Logo Contest Winner Read here.

preLights

Preprint highlights, selected by the biological community.

A little help from my friends: actin and myosin corral mitotic chromosomes so microtubules can find them Read here.

CRISPR meets red blood cells – a new model system to illuminate the roles of host proteins in malaria parasite invasion Read here.

Scientific publications

Haleh Alimohamadi, Alyson S. Smith, Velia M. Fowler, Padmini Rangamani. Heterogeneous distribution of myosin-mediated traction forces governs red blood cell shapes. Manuscript in preparation.

Alyson S. Smith, Roberta B. Nowak, Anastasiya Demenko, Lydie Da Costa, Remi Favier, Alessandro Pecci, Velia M. Fowler. MYH9-related disease mutations cause abnormal red blood cell morphology through increased myosin-actin binding at the membrane. American Journal of Hematology. 2019 March 27. doi: 10.1002/ajh.25472.

Alyson S. Smith, Roberta B. Nowak, Sitong Zhou, Michael Giannetto, David S. Gokhin, Julien Papoin, Ionita C. Ghiran, Lionel Blanc, Jiandi Wan, and Velia M. Fowler. Myosin IIA interacts with the spectrin-actin membrane skeleton to control red blood cell membrane curvature and deformability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 2018 May 8; 115(19): E4377-E4385. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1718285115. Read earlier bioRxiv version here.

Alyson S. Smith, Roberta B. Nowak, Velia M. Fowler. High-resolution fluorescence microscope imaging of erythroblast structure. Book: Erythropoiesis-Methods and Protocols (Editor: Joyce Lloyd), Series: Methods in Molecular Biology. Springer. 2018; 1698:205-228. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7428-3_12.

Priscilla A. Erickson, Andrew M. Glazer, Phillip A. Cleves, Alyson S. Smith, Craig T. Miller. Two developmentally temporal quantitative trait loci underlie convergent evolution of increased branchial bone length in sticklebacks. Proceedings. Biological Sciences. The Royal Society. 2014 Aug 7;281(1788):20140822. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.0822.