Yeast Lords (it’s hard to explain):
The lab is recruiting a junior specialist and/or graduate students for work on two main projects:
A novel nucleophagy pathway that responds to DNA replication stress and we believe to maintain subnuclear domains (i.e., phase separated organelles).
The intersection between cell stress observed in neurodegenerative disease, nuclear homeostasis and cellular allostasis.
Fall 2022 to Summer 2024: As my lab reminds me, I’ve been negligent in keeping up with our amazing lab team over the last two years. I am sorry. Below is a list of a really wonderful young researchers who have blazed the trail on connecting genome integrity, cell stress and neurodegenerative disease. They are listed in roughly reverse chronological order from their joining the lab. I will add details as I can.
Sejal Sripadanna: Sejal is a BMB major who graduated spring 2024. She is finishing her thesis work on a-synuclein, ER stress and how autophagy pathways contribute to protecting cells from neurodegenerative disease associated toxicity. Her thesis is nearly complete and she’s soon off to look for research positions and possibly graduate school after that!
Trina Lim: Trina is a biological sciences major who has partnered with Sejal to understand how different autophagy pathways contribute to a-synuclein induced cell stress. Trina has focused on assessing how a-syn expression leads to the accumulation of “inclusions” that are believed to be linked to cell toxicity. Together with Sejal’s work, we hope to have a publishable report in the next year.
Tiffany Oentoro: Tiffany joined the lab almost two years ago as a senior BMB major after she took BIS104 with me and discovered she liked asking questions about cell biology. Tiffany has done a terrific job exploring the replication stress induced nucleophagy pathway we have characterized. She has been interested in asking how this pathway responds when there are multiple stressors added to cells. Since graduating, Tiffany has led this project as a volunteer in the lab. She has trained a number of new undergraduate research students and we will all miss her when she leaves the lab later this summer.
Denis Yabut: Denis joined the lab as a lab assistant and is moving into a research project on how a-synuclein inclusions are turned over in cells.
Madhulika Appajodu: Madhulika joined the lab to assess whether chromatin modifying proteins important for anaphase resolution of sister chromatids are also cargo for ReSIN. Pivoting due to technical complications, Madhulika also tested the possibility of using an over-expression screen to identify nuclear proteins that induce ReSIN. She graduated this spring AND was accepted into a medical training program. Congrats Madhulika!
Natalie Markman: Natalie is our token student athlete (Go UC Davis LAX!!). She is working on the intersection between neurodegenerative disease induced organelle stress and energy utilization. Her current focus is on how lipid droplet utilization is affected by a-synuclein expression.
Julie Tran: Julie teamed up with Natalie and helped establish the conditions for glucose restriction experiments. Julie graduated in the spring of 2024 and is currently applying to PA schools. Good luck Julie!
Fenna Candy: Fenna is a GGN major and joined the lab to test the idea that cell stress observed in neurodegenerative disease can alter nuclear homeostasis and possibly genome integrity. She is set to do some very exciting experiments this coming fall.
Francesca Gasperini: Francesca found us during a student seminar I gave on how to find a research lab. Obviously, my seminar worked really well. 🙂 Francesca is visiting from the University of Bologna, Italy and conducting a rapid fire thesis project. She is focused on testing the hypothesis that R-loops are involved in helping target nuclear cargo to the vacuole under replication stress. She’s finishing up her thesis experiments this summer before heading back to beautiful Italy.
Kar Choon Chin: Kar Choon is a BMB major and joined the lab to study how chemotherapeutics affect nuclear homeostasis. Specifically he’s testing the idea different platinum based chemotherapeutics differentially affect nuclear function. The prediction is that those which affect ribosome biogenesis will trigger the nucleophagy pathway we are studying in the lab.
Gwendolyn Porter: Gwendolyn was a biological sciences major and joined the lab last summer as a junior specialist. Her project has focused on analyzing phase separated nuclear domains after replication stress. She has made some important findings that suggest ReSIN is connected to the maintenance of these subnuclear subdomains.