2023 has been a banner year for the Shen lab. Here are some of our highlights in chronological order:
December (2022): Helen Donelick successfully defended her dissertation, “Fighting Viruses with Helicases: A Study on Invertebrate Dicer Proteins.” She began her new position at Thermo Fisher Scientific as a Cryo-EM Engineer in February 2023.
January: Our lab’s lysate-to-grid protocol was published in Bio-protocol. Check out how we do accelerated IPs to visualize structures of native and scarce protein complexes.
February: Shuxin Wang defended her dissertation, “Structural Visualization of Cellular Machines that Regulate Protein Folding.” She began her new position at Thermo Fisher Scientific, also as a Cryo-EM Engineer, in March 2023. She and Helen get to hang out together! Shuxin was also selected as a recipient of the inaugural Ken Jacobs Memorial Thesis Award.
June: Dakota Greer defended her Master’s thesis, “Biochemical Binding and Activity Study of a p97 Mutant Variant Associated with Multisystem Proteinopathy.” We wish her all the best as she begins her new career as a scientific recruiter!
June: Ian Cooney defended his dissertation, “Mechanism of Protein Unfolding by the Cdc48 AAA+ ATPase.” Ian’s productivity was truly remarkable.
July: Deirdre Mack awarded NIH F31 fellowship. It is wonderful to see her efforts in science and leadership being recognized. Deirdre is also now serving as the President of the University of Utah SACNAS chapter.
November: Shuxin’s paper on visualizing chaperone-mediated protein folding was published in Molecular Cell. This work was done in partnership with the Willardson lab (BYU). The combination of amazing biochemistry and cryo-EM image processing enabled us to visualize the step-by-step process of a beta-propeller protein becoming folded.
November: Anna Gilstrap was selected as one of 25 undergraduate researchers to present to Utah state legislators. Her presentation will be in January 2024. This is a wonderful opportunity to communicate the impact of our work to a non-science audience.
December: ???? More to come!
