Integrated Calendar

Homologous recombination is an engine of genetic diversity in evolution and in plant breeding. This process typically occurs during meiosis when homologous chromosomes pair and exchange DNA segments. It is a stochastic and infrequent process; closely linked genes rarely recombine and it is limited to sexual reproduction. We showed recently that inter-homologues recombination can be targeted at specific loci, using a CRISPR-Cas-induced DNA double strand break in plant somatic tissues. We discuss the mechanisms of somatic recombination and the prospect for redesigning chromosomes in a targeted manner in crops with or without sexual reproduction.

Episodic memory – the ability to encode, maintain and retrieve information – is critical for everyday functioning at all ages, yet little is known about the development of episodic memory systems and their brain substrates. In this talk, I will present data from a series of studies with which we begin to identify how brain development underlies changes in episodic memory throughout childhood and adolescence. Using structural MRI data, I will present evidence demonstrating how brain development sets limits on cognitive developmnet. I will show that individual differences in fine structural measures of the hippocampus, a region known to be critical for episodic memory, and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region that shows protracted structural development, partially explain age-related improvement in episodic memory. Using functional neuroimaging methods including functional MRI (fMRI) and electrocorticography (ECoG), I will present our ongoing attempts to characterize the neural correlates of episodic memory development. Evidence from fMRI studies suggest that age differences in episodic memory functioning may primarily relate to age differneces in PFC activation and connectivity patterns. Intracranial evidence further underscores the role of the PFC in memory and reveals that spatiotemporal propagation of frontal activity supports memory formation in children. I will highlight the challenges in investigaitons of brain-behavior relations in pediatric populations and discuss how advances in methodologies provide unique opportunities for moving towards a mechanistic understanding of developmental changes.

Since the first demonstration of laser cooling and trapping three decades ago, our abilities to manipulate atomic ensembles and individual atoms with light have been substantially extended. Among those novel capabilities, I will discuss a new method how to directly optically cool an atomic gas to form a Bose-Einstein condensate, without any evaporation. I will also discuss the deterministic preparation of a large array of individual atoms with controlled optically induced long-range Ising type interactions for quantum simulation, and potentially, quantum computing.