The Department of Genetics ever growing and changing with many new graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other staff joining the department, as well as many graduate students and postdocs/fellows finishing their education/training and moving on to the next level. As well members of the department in all areas continue to win awards, publish papers and recieve grants. This newsletter highlights these areas.
Gregory Harris will be joining Kathleen Caron's lab this month as a postdoctoral fellow.
Mike La Gier will be joining Debbie Threadgill's lab this month as a SPIRE postdoctoral fellow.
Tamea Love has joined the administrative staff. She will provide administrative assistance to Karen Mohlke, Fernando Pardo-Manuel, Pat Sullivan and Kirk Wilhelmsen. Tamea will also coordinate the Genetics Research Colloquium.
Heather Lovvorn has also joined the administrative staff as the Department Receptionist. Heather will also handle the Department conference room, LCD projector and laptop reservations.
Melanie Weed, graduate student in the Curriculum in Toxicology, has recently joined David Threadgill's lab.
Lucy Williams, graduate student in the Genetics and Molecular Biology Curriculum, has recently joined Terry Magnuson's lab.
Yuying Xie, graduate student in the Genetics and Molecular Biology Curriculum, has recently joined David Threadgill's lab.
For more information about current graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in Department of Genetics Labs, please visit individual researcher's web pages.
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Recent Departures Former Medical Genetics resident, Dr. Alice Basinger, has taken a position at Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas as a clinical and metabolic geneticist. She completed the genetics residency in 2005 and spent last year doing a fellowship in biochemical genetics with the UNC Medical Genetics program.
Yijing Chen (Research Assistant Professor, Terry Magnuson’s Lab) has accepted an Assistant Professor position in Biological Sciences at Kent State University, Kent Ohio.
Medical Genetics Resident, Dr. Jane Fan, will be spending this coming year doing research work with Dr. Joseph Muenzer on neuroimaging and enzyme replacement therapy in patients with mucopolysaccharidoses.
Britt Kern (Postdoctoral Fellow, Frank Conlon’s lab) completed a SPIRE postdoctoral fellowship and accepted an Assistant Professor position in Biology at Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte NC. Johnson C. Smith is one of the eight partner institutions associated with the SPIRE program.
Jaime Rivera-Pérez (Research Associate, Terry Magnuson’s Lab) has accepted an Assistant Professor position in Cell Biology at University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Wooster, MA.
Karl Simin (Postdoctoral Fellow, Terry van Dyke’s Lab) has accepted an Assistant Professor position at University of Massachusetts Medical School, Dept. of Cancer Biology, Wooster, MA.
Qian Zhang (graduate student) successfully completed her PhD in Terry Van Dyke's lab (July 2006) and will be remaining as a postdoc with the Van Dyke lab for six months before moving to a new position.
Daniel Brown, graduate student in Frank Conlon's lab, has received a Lineberger graduate fellow award.
William Dunworth, a graduate student Genetics and Molecular Biology Curriculum in Kathleen Caron's lab has been awarded a training grant slot in the Developmental Biology Training Program.
Recent Publications Brown, D. D., Davis, A. C., and Conlon, F. L. (2006) Xtn3 is a developmentally expressed cardiac and skeletal muscle-specific novex-3 titin isoform. Gene Expression Patterns (In press: Epub).
Goetz, S.C., Brown, D.D., Conlon, F.L., (2006) TBX5 is required for embryonic cardiac cell cycle progression. Development 133: 2575-2584.
Manyu Li, Della Yee, Terry Magnuson, Oliver Smithies and Kathleen Caron (2006) Reduced maternal expression of adrenomedullin disrupts fertility, placentation and fetal growth in mice. Journal of Clin Invest (in press)
McLear, Julie A., German Garcia-Fresco, Manzoor A. Bhat and Van Dyke, T. (2006). In Vivo Inactivation of pRb, p107 and p130 in Murine Neuroprogenitor Cells Leads to Major CNS Developmental Defects Culminating in High Seizure Rates. Mole Cell, Neuroscience, in press.
Rinella, ES, Eversley CD, Carroll IM, Andrus JM, Threadgill, DW and Threadgill, DS (2006) Human epithelial-specific response to pathogenic Campylobacter jejuni. FEMS Micro Lett (In press: Epub)
Showell, C., Christine, K. S., Mandel, E. M., and Conlon, F. L. (2006) Developmental expression patterns of Tbx1, Tbx2, Tbx5, and Tbx20 in Xenopus tropicalis. Developmental Dynamics 235:1623-1630.
The North Carolina Biotechnology Center Grant has awarded a $250,000 grant to Frank Conlon entitled “Aquatic Vertebrate Model System for Biomedical Research."
The Carolina Center for Gastrointestinal Biology (CGIBD) has awarded a pilot grant to Kathleen Caron to study the effects of adrenomedullin on gastric emptying.
Terry Van Dyke has received grants from both the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation, 07/01/2006 - 06/30/2008, A Mouse Model of Human Ovarian Cancer for Mechanistic, Diagnostic, and Therapeutic Discovery; and the Samuel Waxman Foundation, 07/01/2006 - 6/30/2008, Pten-Regulated Pathways in Glioblastoma: Assessment of Targets in a Preclinical Model.
Gregory Harris will be joining Kathleen Caron's lab this month as a postdoctoral fellow. 
Daniel Brown, graduate student in Frank Conlon's lab, has received a Lineberger graduate fellow award.
The North Carolina Biotechnology Center Grant has awarded a $250,000 grant to Frank Conlon entitled “Aquatic Vertebrate Model System for Biomedical Research."
