If you’re interested in connecting with me about my research, you can find me on OrcID and LinkedIn.
Even though I’m not a practicing scientist and researcher anymore, I loved the work that I did and am considering writing a book about structural biology! Maybe one day, it’ll happen. In the meantime, you can check out all my research publications on Google Scholar, and read some highlights below.
Monitoring traffic patterns in cells
I earned my Ph.D. in Chemical Biology in December 2020. My work, which was co-mentored by Drs Michael Cianfrocco and Kristen Verhey, looked at the molecular roads in cells (called microtubules). Much like human-made streets, these microtubules have “road signs” in the form of chemical modifications. You can imagine that if street lights and road signs are turned off or turned around the traffic jams and chaos that would ensue in a city – in a cell this is partially what drives cancer.
The vast majority of my thesis work researched a particular road sign chemical modification called methylation. Without it, cell division does not occur correctly, a strong phenotype implicated in cancer. My research has helped better understand how and why particular mutations in a protein called SETD2 cause this messed up cell division. To do this, I’ve been looking at color-coded cells using microscopy and conducting biochemical assays.
I’ve given talks about this work at Microscopy & Microanalysis 2019, a preprint can be found on bioRxiv, and the peer reviewed version on JBC.
Cellular structures
Looking at cells and doing biochemistry is really important to understand biological processes, but getting a really good look at the particular proteins involved in such processes can be critical to know how they are regulated. This field is called “structural biology” and aims to see the 3D-structures of proteins and protein complexes. There are many ways to do this, but I have been using a technique called “cryo-electron microscopy” or cryoEM.
Now that cryoEM is becoming more mainstream, we’ve been finding ways to optimize data collection and processing. You can find our work processing beam-tilt data here!
pink microtubules in a cell surround the blue nucleus 
in the middle, ahoy, a mitotic spindle! that means the cell is dividing 
to study proteins on their own, they have to be yanked out of the cell and purified. here is me purifying tubulin, probably at 2 AM. 
a cryoEM micrograph of microtubules (purified from insect cells) 
Mike (PI), Tony (lab manager), and I hugging boxes that contain microscope parts. A tradition in #cryoEM 
a self portrait, where i am a protein called SETD2 adding a red methyl mark to a tubulin dimer