2023 meeting

Thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural 2023 meeting in Bellingham, hosted by Dan Pollard's lab at WWU!

      9:00-9:05 welcome: Dan Pollard and Maitreya Dunham                          

9:05-10:20 session 1: chair Jennifer Nemhauser

Steve Hahn – Mapping genome-wide binding and function for the set of yeast DNA sequence specific transcription factors

Molly Perchlik – Fields lab – The impact on splicing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae of random 50-base sequences in a large library of introns

Leah Anderson – Dunham lab – Experimental evolution of freeze-thaw tolerance

Dan Pollard – Natural variation in codon bias and mRNA folding strength interact synergistically to modify protein expression

Pengyao Jiang – Harris lab – Mutation rate and spectrum variation and evolution in Saccharomyces

Jackson Moore – Measday lab – Identification of a new Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pacific West Coast Wine clade

10:20-11:15 coffee break and posters (suggest last names A-J present)                

11:15-12:15 session 2: chair Chris Beh        

Matthew Berg – Villen lab – Enabling proteome-wide alanine scanning in yeast with mistranslating tRNAs

Emily Dennis – Garcia lab – Investigating the physical conformation of the beneficial yeast prion [BIG+]

Amy Moore – Brewer/Raghuraman lab – Chaos3: Does a replicative helicase allele live up to its name?

Ryan Wong – Mayor lab – Identifying better producers of a difficult protein

Christina (Zixuan) Yuan – Weidberg lab – Activation of a mitochondrial stress response by mis-targeted mitochondrial proteins

12:15-1:15 lunch               

Thanks to Sunrise Science for sponsoring refreshments!

1:15-2:15 session 3: chair Sally Otto                               

Ecaterina (Cathy) Cozma – Stirling lab – Dominant genetics of DDR proteins

Anthony Oppedisano – Hieter lab – Mapping structure-function relationships of endonucleases with deep dominant mutational scanning

Andrew Popchock – Biggins lab – Direct observation of coordinated assembly of individual native centromeric nucleosomes

Hilary Brewis – Kobor lab – Deciphering the function of the histone variant H2A.Z in transcription regulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Josh Brown – Howe lab – Impacts of expressing human MeCP2 variants in budding yeast

2:15-3:00 ADEI/outreach/teaching session: Dan Pollard moderating   

Teaching and outreach vignettes:

Brit Moss

Renee Geck – Dunham lab

Sue Biggins

Maitreya Dunham

Group discussion on inclusive undergraduate research with David Garcia

3:00-3:45 coffee break and posters  (suggest last names K-Z present)  

3:45-4:45 session 4: chair Molly Burke

Alex Leydon – Nemhauser lab – A synthetic genetic platform to understand and engineer coordinated gene expression in yeast, plant & human cells

Alison Greenlaw – Tsukiyama lab – Post-transcriptional regulation shapes the transcriptome of quiescent yeast cells

Megan Sandoval-Powers – Burke lab – Adaptive evolution of antifungal drug resistance in experimental yeast populations with standing genetic variation

Penny Kahn – Otto lab – Navigating complex environmental change: Evolutionary rescue in the presence of multiple metal stressors

Hazel Cui – Teves lab – Diversified and evolutionary role of TBP in Eukaryotic transcription initiation systems

4:45-5:00 discussion about 2024 PNWYC: Maitreya Dunham moderating                             

5:00-8:00ish food and drinks at Kulshan Trackside (all ages): 298 W Laurel St.

Thanks to the Pollard lab for hosting!