Month: May 2024

The Department of Genetics and Biochemistry is excited to welcome two new tenure track assistant professors and a new lecturer to their departmental faculty: Drs. Manuel Fierro, Andrew Jezewski and Kristina Mercer.

Dr. Manuel Fierro is currently a post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Josh Beck in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology at Iowa State University and will be joining the department and Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC) as a tenure track assistant professor. His research has been focused on characterizing the essential protein trafficking machinery in Plasmodium, a genus of parasites that cause malaria in humans. We look forward to Dr. Fierro joining us this October.

Dr. Jezewski is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Damian Krysan’s Lab in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics at the University of Iowa. Like Dr. Fierro, he will be joining the department and Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC) as a tenure track assistant professor. Dr. Jezewski brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the field of eukaryotic pathogens. We are excited to have Dr. Jezewski joining the department officially in January 2025.

Dr. Mercer comes to us with 25 years of experience as a research scientist at Emory University, five years as a public health scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and three years as a lecturer of biology and course coordinator of biology labs at Kennesaw State University. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Mercer, who will begin teaching BCHM/GEN 3040 this fall semester in August 2024 as a lecturer for the department.

Please join us in welcoming Drs. Fierro, Jezewski and Mercer to the Genetics and Biochemistry, the College of Science and the Clemson University family!

Gracie Dellinger ’24, recent genetics and microbiology alum, was one of the six Clemson members recognized with the country’s most prestigious STEM-focused graduate research fellowship, awarded annually through the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship program helps ensure the quality, vitality and diversity of the country’s scientific and engineering workforce by supporting outstanding students pursuing research-based graduate degrees at accredited United States institutions.

Gracie, originally from McClellanville, South Carolina, was a part of the Clemson Honors College and has been performing undergraduate research in EPIC with Dr. Kim Paul since the summer after her junior year of high school, focusing on the parasite that causes African Sleeping Sickness, a disease that can be fatal if left untreated. Last summer, Gracie attended a Research Experience for Undergraduates at UNC Chapel Hill, exploring different adaptations of an intestinal pathogen responsible for a hospital-acquired disease called C. difficile infection.

Gracie will be attending Duke University School of Medicine in the fall, where she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and microbiology. She was also awarded a fellowship called the James P. Duke Fellowship, which aims to attract and develop outstanding scholars at Duke.

Hong Luo co-chaired the 2023 International Conference on Frontier in Grassland Science held in October 2023 in Beijing, China and gave an oral presentation titled “Gene pyramiding for boosted plant growth and broad abiotic stress tolerance”. Dr. Luo was also an invited speaker at the International Conference on Grassland and Forage Science held in November 2023 in Lanzhou, China, where he gave the presentationtitled, “Towards robust grasses under environmental adversities.”

Provost distinguished professor of genetics and biochemistry Robert Anholt was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Genomics Education Partnership symposium, sponsored by the Carolinas Regional Node at Clemson University. In additon, Dr. Anholt was the panel moderator at the Genomics and Informatics in Mental Health Research: Ethical practices and Considerations, Tigers for Inclusion, Diversity (TIDE) and Ethics Conference at Clemson University. 

Assistant professor Zhana Duren was invited to give talks at both the Conference of Midsouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society 2024 and the seminar of Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Indiana University.

Dr. Gopalan was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology and at Duke University in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. She joined the Department of Genetics and Biochemistry and the Center for Human Genetics at Clemson University as an assistant professor in late 2023.

What interested you in coming to Clemson University? I was drawn to Clemson University by the caliber of human genetics research being conducted here, particularly in uncovering the drivers of complex traits. It was also keen to be among colleagues that share a common goal of increasing the research profile of the university.

How did you get interested in your (degree, career, research)? I became interested in using genetics to understand human origins early on in my undergraduate program. I was fascinated by all the research coming out at the time that was discovering how human populations have been connected to each other throughout time. I chose to pursue a career in academia because I wanted to study how human history has shaped present-day patterns of genetic and phenotypic diversity. During my Ph.D., I also developed a strong interest in studying DNA methylation to better understand the impact of the environment on human traits.

What’s a short overview of what you do and hope to accomplish? Research in my lab focuses on unravelling the effects of past and present-day environmental pressures on the human genome and epigenome. The goal of our work is to gain a more complete picture of how natural selection and molecular biological processes interact to shape human phenotypes.

What have you discovered in your research? A lot of my research focuses on human populations that tend to be under-represented in genetics research. As a result, I have been able to find that the effects of aging on DNA is not the same across different populations, potentially due to differences in genetics, environmental exposures, or both. I have also found that the genetic diversity that exists among populations is a powerful tool that can increase our power to detect relationships between genes and traits.

What do you hope to teach our students? Humans are a diverse species in so many ways, but we are also a very young species. Because of our relatively recent common ancestry, we are all very similar to one another from a genetic perspective. Research in our field often focuses on human difference, for good reason, but I think it is important for us to convey this bigger picture to our students and to the public.

What do you like to do in your free time? I like to spend my free time outdoors tending my backyard garden, biking around town, or going for a hike. I also enjoy cooking, indoor rock climbing, and hanging out with my cat.

Genetics graduate student Bharath Kunduru was awarded the Graduate Student Government’s Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award at their awards ceremony on April 4th. 

Gracie Dellinger, an honors college student who is double-majoring in genetics and microbiology, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship. 

Graduate student Debarati Majumdar was awarded a competitive RNA Society Travel Fellowship to attend the 2024 RNA Society Meeting in Edinburgh and present a poster.

Graduate students Jessica Aycock (Dolan Lab) and Colm Roster (Morris lab) were recognized for their posters at the South Carolina Branch of the American Society of Microbiology Spring meeting. Aycock earned first place with her poster titled, “Pseudomonas aeruginosa detects fungal toxins using a novel regulatory cascade.” Roster earned a third place with his work titled, “Enolase inhibitors are potent therapeutic leads against Trypanosoma brucei.”

Genetics student Katie Barfield was named a 2024-25 Dixon Global Policy Scholar, a selective and intensive program for high-achieving honors college students with a demonstrated interest in major national or global issues.

Professor Hong Luo received the 2024 Society for In Vitro Biology Fellow Award, which recognizes society members who have provided outstanding service in helping the society develop and carry out its program.

Senior genetics major and student-athlete, Hogan Morton received the Danny Lee Ford Academic Achievement Award.

Ph.D. student Sky (Xinya) Lu, has been selected as the 2024 recipient of the Hope E. Hopps Award and the Society for In Vitro Biology Student Travel Award to present her research at the 2024 World Congress on In Vitro Biology. 

Graduate students Bharath Kunduru (Sekhon lab), Joshua Turner (Mason lab), Rodgrigo Catalan-Hurtado (Smith lab) and Austin Herbert (Lackey lab) were each awarded an Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship in recognition of their accomplishments and interdisciplinary nature of their research.

Two biochemistry students, Caroline Argenti and Adam Gatch received 2024 Goldwater Scholarships, which is one of the most prestigious and highly competitive national award for students with the potential to advance research in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. 

Alum and last year’s winner of the Marcotte Award Danielle LaVigne received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her studies at Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis. 

Arohi Singhal, Ph.D. student in Kerry Smith’s lab, won the iGRADS competition. In addition, she also received the People’s Choice Award.

Jim Morris received the 2024 University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Awards (URSAAA). The URSAAA were established in 2018 to celebrate the exceptional accomplishments of Clemson University faculty members.

Two EPIC students recently attended the IDeA South Eastern Region Conference in Columbia, South Carolina and brought home awards for their posters. Sabrina Pizzaro’s poster titled, “Use of Peroxisomal Targeting Sequences in Drug Delivery,” won first place in the Chemistry and Biochemistry category. Alanna Scoggins’ poster titled, “Role of Mitochondrial Carriers in Cryptococcus neoformans,” received an honorable mention in the Cellular and Molecular Biology category.

Assistant Professor Zhana Duren and post doctoral fellow Qiuye Yuan published the article “Inferring gene regulatory networks from single cell multiome data using atlas-scale external data” inNature Biotechnology.

Assistant Professor Miriam Konkel published a paper in Nature’s News and Views section titled, “Mobile DNA explains why humans don’t have tails.”

Trudy Mackay, self family endowed chair of human genetics, and Robert Anholt,  provost distinguished professor of genetics and biochemistry, published: “Pleiotropy, epistasis, and the genetic architecture of quantitative traits. Nat Rev Genet,”  in Nature Review Genetics and “Perspectives on the Drosophila melanogaster model for advances in toxicological science” in Current Protocols.

Hong Luo, among lab members, published the paper, “Gene pyramiding for boosted plant growth and broad abiotic stress tolerance” in Plant Biotechnology Journal. 

Assistant Professor Jennifer Mason, with colleagues, published the paper, “FBH1-deficiency sensitizes cells to WEE1 inhibition by promoting mitotic catastrophe” in bioRxiv.

Fifth year Ph.D. student Sabrina Pizzaro published her first paper as a lead author titled,  “Measuring Dynamic Glycosomal pH Changes in Living Trypanosoma brucei,” in JoVE. 

Assistant professor James Lewis was awarded a grant totaling $1,327,489 from the National Science Foundation for his proposal, “CAREER: Functional genomic architecture and population differentiation of a polygenic and sexually dimorphic butterfly mimicry phenotype.”

Assistant professor Jennifer Mason received a $50,000 grant supplement from the American Cancer Society to perform a small compound screen to identify potential targets for cancer therapy.

Genetics major Natalie Shay was awarded an SCbio Foundation Award Grant to intern at Greenwood Genetics Center.

Zhana Duren, assistant professor, received an R21grant from NIDA/NIH totaling 419k. The title is “Statistical methods for gene regulatory analysis of substance use disorder”.