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MacLean Sellars
Hometown: Glendale, CA
University of Strasbourg, France ‘08, Ph.D. Molecular Biology
Haverford College ‘04, B.A. Biology and Sociology
maclean.sellars@med.nyu.edu

As a graduate student, I studied the role of the Ikaros transcription factor in B cell activation and immunoglobulin class switch recombination, as well as in leukemogenesis.

In the Littman lab, I am interested in the role of non-coding (nc)RNAs in gene regulation, and T cell lineage differentiation and function. I am currently using chromatin marks (e.g. histone methylation patterns) to identify ncRNAs that are differentially expressed between different T cell subsets. These will then be tested for functional roles in lineage choice and T cell function.

As secondary projects, I am working to identify functional regulatory elements in the Cd4 and runx3 loci, which may in turn be important in T cell development and function. In addition, the identification of these elements may yield new strategies for conditionally knocking out genes in T cells, new tools for understanding the epigenetic regulation of gene expression, and clues about unknown factors that regulate T cell development.

Publications:

1. Ikaros controls isotype selection during immunoglobulin class switch recombination.
Sellars M, Reina-San-Martin B, Kastner P, Chan S. J Exp Med. 2009 May 11;206(5):1073-87. Epub 2009 May 4.

2: Ikaros represses the transcriptional response to Notch signaling in T-cell development.
Kleinmann E, Geimer Le Lay AS, Sellars M, Kastner P, Chan S. Mol Cell Biol. 2008 Dec;28(24):7465-75. Epub 2008 Oct 13.

3: Novel insights into the relationships between dendritic cell subsets in human and mouse revealed by genome-wide expression profiling. Robbins SH, Walzer T, Dembélé D, Thibault C, Defays A, Bessou G, Xu H, Vivier E, Sellars M, Pierre P, Sharp FR, Chan S, Kastner P, Dalod M. Genome Biol. 2008 Jan 24;9(1):R17. [Epub ahead of print]

4: Immature CD4+CD8+ thymocytes and mature T cells regulate Nur77 distinctly in response to TCR stimulation. Cunningham NR, Artim SC, Fornadel CM, Sellars MC, Edmonson SG, Scott G, Albino F, Mathur A, Punt JA. J Immunol. 2006 Nov 15;177(10):6660-6.

5: Notch activation is an early and critical event during T-Cell leukemogenesis in Ikaros-deficient mice. Dumortier A, Jeannet R, Kirstetter P, Kleinmann E, Sellars M, dos Santos NR, Thibault C, Barths J, Ghysdael J, Punt JA, Kastner P, Chan S. Mol Cell Biol. 2006 Jan;26(1):209-20.

6: Cutting edge: identification of the targets of clonal deletion in an unmanipulated thymus.
Cho HJ, Edmondson SG, Miller AD, Sellars M, Alexander ST, Somersan S, Punt JA. J Immunol. 2003 Jan 1;170(1):10-3.