April 2023
Chenhui Deng & Frieda Kage receive
2022 E. Lucile Smith Award for Scientific Excellence in Biochemistry
The Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology is pleased to announce Chenhui Deng and Frieda Kage as the recipients of the 2022 E. Lucile Smith Award for Scientific Excellence in Biochemistry. The Smith Awards honor the ground-breaking career of Dr. E. Lucile Smith, the first woman to attain the rank of Professor of Biochemistry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Chenhui and Frieda received this award in recognition of their exceptional research accomplishments during the past year. The Dr. E. Lucile Smith awards are funded by the generosity of Dr. Smith’s nephew Gray Parker, his wife Mary Kay, and the Booth-Bricker Fund.
Chenhui is being recognized for his accomplishments as a Ph.D. candidate in the labs of Dr. Duane Compton and Dr. Kristina Godek. Chenhui joined the Compton and Godek Labs in June 2019, where his research focuses on the causes and consequences of aneuploidy with incorrect numbers of chromosomes during early human development using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) as a model system. Previous studies have shown that chromosome segregation errors are surprisingly common in human totipotent and pluripotent embryonic cells, resulting in aneuploidy being the leading cause of miscarriages and birth defects. Yet, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood, especially for mitotic errors. Combining quantitative microscopy, live-cell imaging, and biochemical approaches, Chenhui found that the most frequent mitotic error in hPSCs is lagging chromosomes caused by improper microtubule attachments. He further investigated the strategies using small molecules to reduce mitotic errors in hPSCs. Collectively, Chenhui’s work demonstrates that a low mitotic fidelity is an inherent and conserved phenotype of hPSCs. Importantly, chromosome segregation fidelity depends on developmental state in normal human cells, with mitotic error rates increasing upon gain and decreasing upon loss of pluripotency. This work was recently published and featured as the cover in the February 2023 issue of Stem Cell Reports.
Frieda is being recognized for her accomplishments as a postdoctoral research scientist in the lab of Dr. Harry Higgs. She graduated with her Ph.D. in Molecular Cellular Biology from Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University and joined the Higgs Lab in February 2019. Frieda’s projects in the Higgs lab encompass two different actin-based structures, “Calcium-induced actin” (CIA) assembled on endoplasmic reticulum, and “Acute damage-induced actin” (ADA) assembled on mitochondria. CIA and ADA are controlled by different actin-binding proteins upon different stimuli, resulting in different cellular consequences. CIA causes mitochondria to divide. ADA occurs when mitochondria fail and appears to be important in maintaining cellular energy supply during this situation. Mitochondria dysfunction is associated with many diseases of aging, including neurodegeneration, so they feel understanding these actin-based structures will help in understanding the aging process. In Frieda’s work published in Molecular Biology of the Cell in 2022, she combined gene-editing tools, such as CRISPR, with quantitative microscopy and biochemical assays to reveal how CIA promotes mitochondrial division. In her work published in Current Biology in 2022, she uncovered the converging pathways leading to ADA formation on mitochondria.