News
Announcements
Paulomi Bhattacharya defends her thesis
Andrew Perez defends his thesis
Read our newest publication, “Genome organization around nuclear speckles drives mRNA splicing efficiency” in Nature ►
Jimmy Guo defends his thesis
Mackenzie Strehle defends her thesis
Welcome Jolo Ferrer!
Jolo Ferrer joins the lab as the newest Guttman lab graduate student!
Guttman lab hosts students to learn SPRITE
Guttman lab hosts students to learn SPRITE from friends of the lab – K.V. Prasanth’s lab at the University of Illinois –
Urbana Champaign and Jennifer Phillips-Cremmins lab at UPenn.
Farewell to Our Outstanding Summer Students!
Farewell to Our Outstanding Summer Students! August 2023 was a bittersweet moment as we bid farewell to our talented summer students, Jessica Mann (Amgen Scholars, MIT ’24) and Tanvi Ganapathy (SURF, Caltech ’26).
Baking Up Fun at Guttman Lab’s Summer Cookie Hour Challenges!
Baking Up Fun at Guttman Lab’s Summer Cookie Hour Challenges! Every Tuesday in the Guttman lab we host our summer series of weekly cookie hour baking challenges. Our lab members come together for friendly bake-offs, treats, tea, and the crowning of the Guttman Lab Bakeoff winner. It’s a delightful way to foster team spirit and satisfy our sweet tooth!
Isabel Goronzy Triumphs in Thesis Defense!
Isabel Goronzy Triumphs in Thesis Defense! In July 2023, Isabel Goronzy successfully defended her thesis. We wish her the best as she starts medical school again at UCLA in August.
In The News
Gene Proximity to Nuclear Speckles Drives Efficient mRNA Splicing
A news article in The Scientist discusses the latest research into significantly more efficient mRNA splicing based on its proximity to nuclear speckles.
“This idea that functional kinetic coupling of two very diverse but critically integrated processes is achieved through physical spatial organization, remodeling of DNA architecture, is something that I wouldn’t have necessarily anticipated,” Guttman said, “but I think it’s incredibly exciting, and more generally, in thinking about novel mechanisms of how quantitative regulation occurs in the cell.”
Read the article in The Scientist ▶︎
Featured this week in Caltech News: Prashant Bhat’s latest work on nuclear speckles
Featured this week in Caltech News: New work on nuclear speckles, now published in Nature, “Genome organization around nuclear speckles drives mRNA splicing efficiency“.
Previously, we tended to think of splicing as a constant—you make a pre-mRNA; you splice it. Now we know that the physical organization of the nucleus makes a big difference in the efficiency of splicing and, by extension, other processes. – Prashant Bhat, PhD
Read the article in Caltech News ▶︎
Mitch Guttman on the Active Motif Epigenetics Podcast
In a recent interview on the Active Motif Epigenetics Podcast with host Dr. Stefan Dillinger, Dr. Mitch Guttman discussed exploring the long non-coding RNA Xist and its role in X chromosome inactivation, as well as his lab’s development of the SPRITE method to map multi-way contacts between DNA, RNA, and proteins to better understand 3D nuclear organization.
Listen to the interview ▶︎
Revealing chromosome contours, one dot at a time
Nature interviews Guttman Lab in this week’s Technology Feature discussing the latest technological advances for studying 3D genome organization. In concert with the in situ microscopy renderings created at Caltech’s Cai Lab, Guttman Lab’s SPRITE method has opened the door to discovery driven proximity interactions – even long distance interactions. Even lab mascot SHARP-y made the feature! Read the full article at Nature.com
The Vast Little Library Inside of Your Cells
Featured this week in Caltech News: Using the latest innovation developed at Guttman Lab, RNA-DNA SPRITE, our team discovered that non-coding RNA create “compartments” within the nucleus and shepherd key molecules to precise regions in the genome. Read this review now at Caltech News
Prashant awarded de Karman Fellowship
Prashant Bhat awarded de Karman Fellowship. Reserved for graduate students going into their final year of doctoral work, the fellowship was created to recognize and support outstanding scholastic achievement. Read about Prashant’s work and the award at Caltech News
Caltech Professor Discovers Long Intergenic Non-coding RNA to Treat Incurable Neurodevelopmental Disorder
In an in-depth Q&A session, Professor Guttman explains the important connection between long intergenic non-coding RNAs, or lincRNAs, and X chromosome inactivation. Read the full featuered interview at TouchPoints Magazine
Sofi Quinodoz wins HHMI Hanna Gray Fellowship
As a doctoral student at Guttman Lab, Sofi developed a new way to map how cells’ nuclei are organized. Read about the fellowship at HHMI
SARS-CoV-2 Disables Key Components of Human Cells’ Defense System
Read the article in The Scientist