Events

This year, we gathered over pizza to once again participate in a lab holiday white elephant gift exchange.

Additionally, we took the time to express specific gratitude to other lab members as a way to recognize everyone’s efforts in creating a productive and positive lab environment!

To recognize a variety of lab accomplishments, we celebrated together at Emily’s house for a pot-luck style lab brunch!

Some of the many reasons for celebration included two new grants awarded to the lab, a recently published paper that was led by postdoc Spencer Gang (Gang et al PLOS Genetics 2022), and the contributions of our undergrads as they move on in their careers.

We took the opportunity to also invite a few lab alumni who have since moved on to other positions. It was nice to have everyone— postdocs, staff, students, and alumni— together for an outside-of-lab event!

Over the last 8 weeks, Lisa Trevino has been working under the supervision of IRACDA postdoc Dr. Spencer Gang to perform research in our lab as part of the UCSD School of Medicine’s Pharmacology Department’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) Program.

While with us, Lisa grew familiar with C. elegans as a model organism and worked with Spencer to assess pals-22 mutants for altered mitochondrial function and morphology. As part of this research, they helped to establish a protocol for TMRM staining to measure mitochondrial potential in our lab.

Thank you for your great work during your fellowship and congratulations on a great presentation of your research at the SURF Research Symposium! Best of luck with your future endeavors.

Though we’re sad to see some members of our lab leave us, we’re happy to wish them luck on their future endeavors. We got together for a lab barbecue to celebrate the accomplishments of Eillen, Crystal, and Kealia, and waved them each off with gifts that commemorate their contributions— both scientific and lab-culture wise! Additionally, now that she’s completed her rotations, we’re happy to welcome Lakshmi onboard after she decided to join our lab.

While with us, Eillen helped to drive research on pnp-1 and its regulation of C. elegans innate immunity in the context of the IPR. Congratulations to Eillen as she transitions into her position as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Cal State University – Dominguez Hills!

Crystal (left) worked with Eillen to characterize pnp-1‘s role in innate immunity in the context of the IPR, and we wish her the best as she begins her PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. Recent UC San Diego graduate Kealia (right) provided key lab support and ensured that all reagents and consummables were stocked, and we also want to wish her luck as she finalizes her EMT license and gears up for PA school applications!

A COVID-19-cognizant pizza lunch to commemorate a wonderful data presentation by UC San Diego graduate student Lakshmi Batachari detailing the work she conducted during her rotation in the Troemel Lab. Lakshmi worked closely with Postdoc Vladimir Lazetic to determined how predicted DRH-1 binding partners influence IPR expression. In parallel, she created a strain that can be used for an unbiased forward genetic screen to identify additional regulators of the IPR in the context of Orsay virus infection. Thank you for working with us, and best of luck with future rotations!

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, our lab’s annual white elephant tradition persists, albeit with some modifications. After a socially-distanced gift exchange where we each picked a wrapped present from the pile at random, we opened the gifts over Zoom— trying to determine who got what from whom proved to be a great time. Happy holidays from the Troemel Lab!

Bidding a socially-distanced farewell to Rasika, the latest UC San Diego student to rotate through the Troemel lab! Under the guidance of Spencer, Rasika made some wonderful contributions to a project seeking to identify interactors of PALS-25.

Best of luck in her future rotations!

Celebrating Bretta’s accomplishments during her time in the Troemel lab over a socially distanced pizza picnic! Lab manager at the time of her departure, Bretta kept our lab running smoothly during a sudden transition to pandemic-conscious research policies and regulations. Best of luck to Bretta in her future endeavors!