BIO
I grew up in Conway, Massachusetts and moved to Burlington in 2011 to pursue my undergraduate studies. Since then I have earned B.S. degrees in Ecological Agriculture and Molecular Genetics, managed a 12-acre vineyard for a year, and begun my graduate studies. In Burlington I found the perfect place to enjoy my hobbies including: snowboarding, mountain biking, fishing, gardening, and baseball.
The conservation of genes encoding protein complexes or networks that perform vital cellular functions such as transcription, translation, metabolic processes, and vesicular trafficking is often broad, sometimes spanning across kingdoms. Therefore, when the function of a protein (VPS26C) the Tierney lab had been studying in Arabidopsis upon my joining the lab was functionally characterized in exquisite detail in human cell culture and we noticed that members of the vesicular trafficking pathway in which it participates are conserved but uncharacterized in Arabidopsis, I began my study of two of these proteins, CCDC22 and CCDC93. Since joining the Tierney lab I have identified short root and root hair phenotypes of ccdc22 and ccdc93 mutants and implicated ccdc93 in a vacuolar trafficking pathway involving VTI13. Current efforts include identifying proteins that CCDC22 and CCDC93 are capable of physically interacting with and further resolving their roles in vesicular trafficking in Arabidopsis.
Bio
I grew up in Conway, Massachusetts and moved to Burlington in 2011 to pursue my undergraduate studies. Since then I have earned B.S. degrees in Ecological Agriculture and Molecular Genetics, managed a 12-acre vineyard for a year, and begun my graduate studies. In Burlington I found the perfect place to enjoy my hobbies including: snowboarding, mountain biking, fishing, gardening, and baseball.
The conservation of genes encoding protein complexes or networks that perform vital cellular functions such as transcription, translation, metabolic processes, and vesicular trafficking is often broad, sometimes spanning across kingdoms. Therefore, when the function of a protein (VPS26C) the Tierney lab had been studying in Arabidopsis upon my joining the lab was functionally characterized in exquisite detail in human cell culture and we noticed that members of the vesicular trafficking pathway in which it participates are conserved but uncharacterized in Arabidopsis, I began my study of two of these proteins, CCDC22 and CCDC93. Since joining the Tierney lab I have identified short root and root hair phenotypes of ccdc22 and ccdc93 mutants and implicated ccdc93 in a vacuolar trafficking pathway involving VTI13. Current efforts include identifying proteins that CCDC22 and CCDC93 are capable of physically interacting with and further resolving their roles in vesicular trafficking in Arabidopsis.