Lab News

Rome and mRNPs

Ben was recently able to attend a conference on mRNP structure and function in Rome (yes, life is hard) where he shared recently published data from Dr. Ryuta Asada in the lab. The science was great, as was the art, culture, food, and friendly company. We cannot wait for the next time this meeting is held.  

Call me Doctor...

Congratulations to Arvind for receiving his PhD and publishing a paper in eLife describing a new mode of regulation for the DEAD-box ATPase Dbp5 by structured RNAs and Gle1. Arvind is now headed to the Bay Area and the next phase of his career. We wish him well and look forward to the great science he will do! 

Welcome Christian and Pragyan!

We are excited to welcome Christian Torres and Pragyan Singh to the lab.

Christian joins us as a PREP Scholar for the next year. Our goal is to convince him of the wonders of yeast to study fundamental biology, and have some fun too along the way.

Pragyan is a postdoctoral fellow who brings previous experience in yeast RNA and telomere biology, who was most recently at the Tel Aviv University in Israel within the laboratory of Dr. Martin Kupiec.

Our lab mascot and therapist

Science is exciting, rewarding, and hard at times, so we all need to remember to relax and enjoy life. To help us do this, we have our own in house therapist…Phoebe. She, like the rest of us, likes to have fun, has the odd bad hair day, and needs to relax at times too!

Hello Andrew,

Excited to have Andrew Dominguez join the Montpetit lab! Andrew is part of the BMCDB graduate group at UC Davis and comes to us with an interest in gene expression regulation after time spent in the Bay Area biotech industry and Fred Hutch in Seattle. Welcome to the lab!

Two Masters emerge…

2020-21 will be a year to remember, not because of the pandemic, but for the success of Kim Marinelli and Gita Mallya in their graduate research. Congratulations on receiving your Master’s degrees from the Viticulture and Enology program. Looking forward to drinking your success in the future!

Not even a pandemic could stop Taylor!

It was never in doubt. Congratulations Taylor for earning your PhD in Food Science. An amazing colleague to have in my group who is off to blaze new trails in data science.

Ryuta’s turn…

Not to be left out, Ryuta had a paper accepted on non-coding RNA based nucleosome positioning and transcriptional regulation in fission yeast. Congrats!

T is for Theresa and T32!

Congratulations to Theresa, our newly joined BMCDB PhD trainee, for being offered a trainee position in both the Molecular and Cellular Biology and NIEHS T32 training programs at UC Davis. While she was only able to accept one of these positions, we are thankful for the support of both programs and the NIH. A great start Theresa! We sure look forward to the annual T32 retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake and many more such awards in the future.

Two Master students join the lab

Welcome  Gita and Kim to the group to study the amazing biology of budding yeast and the great fermentation products that this organism provides…

Graduation and a job too!

Congratulations to Aniketa for graduating this past June and landing a job as a junior specialist at UCSF. Best of luck with your scientific adventures!

Ph.inisheD!!

Ph.inisheD. Congrats to Biplab for successfully defending his Ph.D!

Good things come in threes…

For Azra, this has been a great summer. She defended her PhD with great acclaim, published a methods paper on single molecule imaging, and had her most recent work accepted to eLife describing a novel role for Dbp5p in tRNA nuclear export. No wonder she has her own cheering section.

Congrats Arvind

Arvind has been accepted into the prestigious Yeast Genetics & Genomics course at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with a travel award too! Way to go Arvind!