The lab bids Tom Hill a fond farewell
Tom is off to a position at NIH Frederick as a Bioinformatics Analyst. He started in the lab in August 2016 right when the lab started. He will be missed!
Brielle McKee joins the lab for a rotation
Brielle is a first year graduate student from Kansas. Her rotation project will involve working on genes that show similar influence on immune defense in flies and worms even though flies and worms don’t share canonical immune pathways. She will be in the lab from November to mid-December. Welcome Brielle!
Kervens and Vedant try out the lab as rotation students
Kervens Accillien and Vedant Jain are two first year students rotating in the lab for the next several weeks. Kervens comes from Minnesota and is working on in vitro aspects of antimicrobial peptides. Vedant comes from Pittsburgh State in Kansas and is working on meiotic drive. Welcome to both!
Welcome Isaac, Wen-Juan and Clint!
On August 1st, we had three new members join the Unckless lab. We are excited for them to be here!
Isaac Nevarez-Saenz is a new technician in the lab. He completed a BS in pharmacy at KU, then was a PREP scholar and worked for a peptide synthesis company. Isaac will work on all things related to in vitro antimicrobial peptides.
Wen-Juan Ma is a new postdoc. She comes by way of the University of Groningen (PhD), University of Lausanne (postdoc), and Amherst College (postdoc). More information is on her website (http://www.wenjuanma.com/). Wen-Juan will focus on sex-ratio meiotic drive in D. affinis.
Clint Rice is also a new postdoc. He did his PhD at the University of Iowa and has worked as a postdoc in the KU IRACDA program with Rob Ward. Clint is switching to the Unckless lab to work on the evolution of antimicrobial peptides. You can read more about Clint here (https://molecularbiosciences.ku.edu/clinton-rice).
Several new preprints posted
Lab members have been busy during the pandemic. We recently posted the following preprints on bioRXiv. Also, here is one take on the value of preprints (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000151).
Hill, T and RL Unckless. 2020. Recurrent evolution of two competing haplotypes in an insect DNA virus. bioRXiv: 10.1101/2020.0514.096024. PDF
Hill, T and RL Unckless. 2020. Selection and demography shape genome variation in a ‘Sky Island’ species. bioRXiv: 10.1101/2020.05.14.096008. PDF
Hill, T, HL Rosales-Stephens, and RL Unckless. 2020. Rapid divergence of the copulation proteins in the Drosophila dunni group is associated with hybrid post-mating-prezygotic incompatibilities. bioRXiv: 10.1101/2020.05.20.106724. PDF
Bravo Nunez, MA, IM Sabbarini, LE Eide, RL Unckless and SE Zanders. 2020. Atypical meiosis can be adaptive in outcrossed S. pombe due to wtf meiotic drivers. bioRXiv: 10.1101/2020.04.28.066035. PDF
Unckless, RL, PA Lansdon and BD Ackley. 2020. A comparative analysis of Caenorhabditis and Drosophila transcriptional changes in response to pathogen infection. bioRXiv: 977595. PDF
Jessie Perlmutter joins the lab as a postdoc
Jessie did her undergraduate work at the University of Rochester working antibiotics against Staphlyococcus aureus. She then moved to Vanderbilt where she completed a PhD with Seth Bordenstein in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her PhD work focused on the genetic basis of Wolbachia -induced male killing. Her work resulted in several papers published in mSystems, mBio, PLoS Pathogens and Nature. Her work at KU will involve projects in both Drosophila immunity and Wolbachia. We are excited to have her!
