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Andrea Hadjikyriacou (Steve Clarke group) and Alexander Nikolich Patananan (PhD Biochemistry ’14) are the session organizers.
Titled “Post-translational Modifications and the Microorganism Response” the session will take place on Tuesday, April 5th at the 2016 ASBMB annual meeting in San Diego. The session is part of the “Straight from the Bench: 2016 Annual Meeting Sessions led by grad students and postdocs”.
Speakers will be Laurie Read, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Buffalo, and Feng Shao, Investigator, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijin, China. The deadline to submit an abstract for the conference is Nov. 5th.
“I have been involved with ASBMB as a blogger for the past meeting and as a member I receive their email updates” Andrea said. “ I saw the tentative schedule for the meeting in San Diego and didn’t see a session that was related to my research, which was disappointing because I loved the organized session at this years past Boston meeting – it really made the conference that much more enjoyable to attend talks related to my research. ASBMB had a new call for proposals for graduate student and post doc led sessions, where we are able to invite speakers and select abstracts for talks. I sent in my proposal for the session on “Posttranslational modifications and the microorganism response” mainly because I wanted to learn about how bacteria and other microorganisms utilize PTMs for their own needs.” “I work on mammalian protein arginine methyltransferases”, Andrea continued, “but I wanted to expand on how microorganisms have evolved to use modifications either to modify and regulate their own genome or use it to hijack the host they infect. I had to propose two main speakers for my session, and I wanted to invite Dr. Laurie Read and Dr. Feng Shao. My proposal was one of two selected proposals and I had to select a coorganizer/cochair that had to be a postdoc, so the first person that came to mind was my colleague and former lab mate Dr. Alexander Patananan who was more than willing to do it! It is an exciting experience, as we have been involved in every aspect of organizing a symposium – inviting the speakers, promoting our session by creating a flyer and a YouTube video, selecting talks thru the submitted abstracts, and leading/running the symposium/session at the actual meeting! It is a really cool experience so far and I am really enjoying working with ASBMB to make this happen!” 
“I was fortunate to be on the Cellular and Molecular Biology Training Grant as a graduate student and be mentored by Dr. Steven Clarke, two factors that enabled and encouraged me to attend conferences,” Dr. Patananan said. “The ASBMB Annual Meeting was a conference I attended every year during my time as a graduate student. Although I always enjoyed presenting at the poster sessions at this conference and attending the various lecture sessions, I always thought it would be fun to actually help organize a session. When Andrea invited me to participate with her in the planning, organization, and advertising of a symposium for the 2016 ASBMB Annual Meeting, I was more than thrilled! We are both excited to not only hear our invited guest speakers, but also to promote the work of our graduate student and postdoctoral scholar colleagues at this symposium.” Dr. Patananan is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Professor Michael Teitell’s laboratory in the UCLA Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
