Michael A. Lynes Laboratory

Dr. Jinghui Zang
St. Jude Endowed Chair in Bioinformatics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee
UConn ’94

Co-sponsored by Dept. Molecular and Cell Biology, The Institute for Systems Genomics, and the School of Computing

Genomic Variants in Pediatric Cancer: Driver Discovery, Clinical Testing and Computational Analysis

Jinghui Zhang’s research focuses on developing and applying genomic-based approaches for improving the treatment and outcome of pediatric cancer. Her research on innovative computational methods development has greatly advanced discovery, interpretation, and visualization of somatic and germline variants. She has built a new Computational Biology Department at St Jude by recruiting and mentoring multi-disciplinary computational experts to establish innovative research programs focusing on pediatric cancer. An advocate for genomic data sharing, Zhang initiated the development of St. Jude Cloud, the world’s largest pediatric cancer data sharing platform. She received a PhD in Genetics from the University of Connecticut in 1994 for research done with the late Claire M. Berg (MCB). She continued work at the NCBI for many years, worked in industry (Glaxo Wellcome, Celera Genomics) and at the National Cancer Institute. Since 2010 she has been at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. She is an elected fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology. 

Helena Heyer-Gray, Klassen Lab

Abaecin-2 modulates interactions in a fungus-growing ant symbiosis by changing copper availability

Dr. Aoife Heaslip, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut

Host: Carol Teschke

Intracellular cargo transport in Toxoplasma gondii

The human pathogen Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) causes life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals and when infection occurs in utero. Survival and disease pathogenesis are dependent on host cell invasion, intracellular replication and egress, which results in destruction of the infected cells. In order to complete this lytic cycle, Toxoplasma must traffic proteins to three distinct secretory organelles, the micronemes, rhoptries and dense granules. In this talk I will present our recent work characterizing how actin and an unconventional myosin motor, MyoF regulate protein trafficking and vesicle transport in Toxoplasma.

Bio: Aoife Heaslip received her bachelor’s degree from University College Dublin and PhD degree from the University of Vermont under the mentorship of Dr. Gary Ward. Aoife then moved to Indiana University and worked as a postdoctoral associate with Dr. Ke Hu. She then returned to Vermont to complete a second postdoc with Dr. David Warshaw, an expert in myosin biophysics. I joined the MCB department as an assistant professor in 2017.

Heaslip website