Cornell Human Ecology

Cornell is hosting a stem-cell cheek swabbing campaign until March 20 across the Ithaca campus. The goal: Inspire 10,000 students, faculty and staff ages 18-35 to spend 30 seconds swabbing themselves to join the national stem cell registry. Cornellians who match with a patient in need could donate stem cells or blood-marrow through @nmdp_org, a nonprofit that facilitates transplants. Donors must be 18-35, making universities ideal places to test for would-be matches. Big Red, Big Impact – the largest such event NMDP has ever hosted – entails swabbing stations across the campus, with an extensive network of volunteers assisting with signups and handing out kits for Cornellians to swab the insides of their own cheeks. People are able to swab themselves at sites ranging from North Campus to Collegetown and Willard Straight Hall. “Cornell is proud to partner with NMDP to drive science, strengthen the national registry and expand opportunities for Max and the thousands of other patients who are awaiting life-saving transplants,” said President Michael I. Kotlikoff. “I know that our community will enthusiastically come together to help others, advance knowledge and do the greatest good.” More information, and volunteer signups, can be found at go.nmdp.org/m/NMDPCornell.

Researchers in the Division of Nutritional Sciences have identified a molecular mechanism that constrains skeletal muscle regeneration and myofiber repair, a finding that could lead to improved treatment for conditions like muscular dystrophy and severe injury. To repair muscle, muscle cells, or myocytes, fuse to one another. But the molecular pathways that signal this cell-to-cell fusion have remained poorly defined. “We don’t fully understand how muscle regeneration occurs after injury or during aging,” said Daniel Berry, the Andre Bensadoun, Ph.D. ’60 Associate Professor in @CornellCHE. The team, led by Berry, found that platelet-derived growth factor receptor beta (PDGFRb), a receptor protein located in cell membranes, is a key modulator of myocyte function in adult muscle cells. They published their findings Feb. 16 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The co-first authors are Siwen Xue, a doctoral student in molecular nutrition, and Abigail Benvie, Ph.D. ’24, now a @Yale postdoctoral fellow. More: news.cornell.edu/stories/202….

Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54, Supreme Court justice and @CornellCAS alumna, was a champion for women’s equality. Her style, and the substance behind it, will be on display in an exhibit, “Fashioning Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 and the Power of Presence.” The exhibit – a collaboration between the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy (@CornellBPP) and the College of Human Ecology (@CornellCHE) – will run March 16 to May 1, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, in the Rachel Hope Doran ’19 and Terrace Level Display Cases in the Human Ecology Building. The exhibit will feature accessories, on loan from family members, from Ginsburg’s personal wardrobe, including her signature lacy judicial collars (among them her distinctive “Dissent” collars) along with gloves, handbags, jewelry and scarves. Cornellian yearbooks and a Class of 1954 Freshman Desk Book, from Cornell University Library, will also be displayed. Pieces from the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC) expand the narrative, with examples of fashion and justice influenced by Ginsburg’s legal legacy. “This is a really exciting opportunity to talk about the intersections of fashion, law, freedom of expression, and clothing as symbolic speech” said exhibit curator Denise Green, Lau Family Associate Professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Human Centered Design, in the College of Human Ecology (CHE). Read more: news.cornell.edu/stories/202….