News
Darshan Awarded Post-Doc Fellowship by McDonnell Center for Cell and Molecular Neurbiology
Darshan Sapkota, a post-doc in our lab, was recently awarded a fellowship to pursue the functional role for stop codon readthrough. Many genes have multiple stop codons within their (potential) coding sequence; sometimes, ribosomes “read through” one of these stop codons and continue adding amino acids to the protein chain–and these proteins appear to mature […]
Lab Awarded New R01 Grant on Williams Syndrome
On Friday, the lab was informed that we were awarded an R01 grant to study the genetics of Williams Syndrome! Graduate student Nathan Kopp has been modeling this disorder in mice, namely by studying cis and trans effects of the transcription factor Gtf2i, which falls within the chromosomal region lost in Williams Syndrome (WS). Gtf2i has been implicated in […]
Post-Doc Mike Vasek joins the lab, awarded grant within first week!!
The lab welcomed Mike Vasek, a post-doctoral researcher, to the now-very-large lab family last week. Mike did his PhD work at Wash U as well with Robyn Klein, M.D, Ph.D, modeling clinical observations on post-West-Nile-encephalitis syndromes in mice. West Nile and other flaviviruses, and their interactions with the CNS, are an especially important field in […]
Shyam Wins Undergraduate Thesis Award, Harvard-Bound in Fall
Our undergrads are on a roll! Shyam accepted an offer to the Harvard-MIT MD-PhD program, which pays full tuition for all eight (plus) years of school and a generous stipend on top. On top of that, he was just informed about earning the Quatrano Prize in Biology for his undergraduate thesis! The award is given […]
Rohan’s Summer Research Funded!
Rohan will be staying the summer to work with Kristina studying astrocytes, thanks to Wash U’s BioSURF (Biology Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) program! Rohan will be helping to characterize the functional roles of RNAs that appear to localize to the processes of astrocytes. What are astrocytes, you say? They’re (very important) support cells that help neurons get important […]