Dr. Butler's lab is interested in how animals respond to and are affected by the environment. To accomplish that, they focus on the physiology and behavior of birds and how these factors change in order to prepare for and then successfully renew their plumage. Along with the basic biology of these events, Dr. Butler's lab is also involved in conservation implications for birds trying to renew their plumage under environmental challenges. The lab generally conducts its field work in the summer in the New Jersey Pine Barrens studying chickadees, sparrows, and warblers and collecting feather samples, blood samples, and data on age, sex, body mass, fat stores, and plumage state. In the academic year, the collected samples can be used for analysis, such as estimating red blood cell counts, white blood cell ratios, and hormone concentrations.
November 2021: Dr. Grochau-Wright
Dr. Grochau-Wright’s lab focus on the the genetic differences, developmental control, and evolution of unicellular and multicellular life. His lab is also interested in discussing the philosophical side of what it means to be a living multicellular organism. The lab uses Volvocine Green Algae as a model organism because it is a clade of closely related species with varying complexity. Specifically, his lab studies how cellular differentiation occurs in these species and wishes to find factors that determine cell type.
October 2021: Dr. Erickson's Lab
With Dr. Erickson's background in Neurobiology and Physiology, his lab focuses on discovering the effects of nicotine and serotonin on breathing mechanisms. His lab is interested in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), an unexplained child death disorder, usually during sleep, associated with regions of the brain that control breathing and serotonin deficiencies. First, the lab works with mice with a knockout for the Pet-1 gene, which is required to develop serotonin neurons. Then, they measure the cardiorespiratory behavior in knockout and wild-type mice in response to changes in gas concentrations such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lab also is interested in the effect of maternal smoking as a SIDS risk factor, so they monitor mice with developmental exposure to nicotine, with and without the Pet-1 gene knockout.
March 2021: Dr. Peel's Lab
All cells have a cytoskeleton that is important for maintaining cell shape, for internal transport and for cell division. The Peel Lab studies how a major component of the cytoskeleton, the microtubules, are regulated by the post-translational modification glutamylation. They use mutations in the small nematode worm C. elegans to up and down-regulate glutamylation, and monitor the effect on microtubule function in cilia and cell division.
February 2021: Dr. O'Connell's Lab
The O'Connell lab studies pattern formation during embryogenesis in vertebrates with zebrafish as their model organism. They are pursuing the analysis of two gene families of RNA binding proteins in zebrafish that are involved in the establishment of the dorsal/ventral axis. The first is ElrA, a CPEB protein that binds to the 3’UTR of certain transcripts and mediates when they are translated. The second is the Squid gene family, which are potential homologs of the Drosophila squid genes, and are important for determining the dorsal/ventral axis. This lab is particularly interested in translational regulation via cytoplasmic polyadenylation.
January 2021: Dr. Clement's Lab
The Clement lab works to investigate the evolution of plants using morphology, genomes, biogeography, and phylogenetics. Currently, they are studying the evolution of honeysuckles (Lonicera) with a specific focus on explaining how fusion of adjacent parts (leaves, fruits, petals, and more) has evolved in these plants and elucidating what role fusion plays in the ecology of honeysuckles. The overall focus of this lab is Plant Systematics and Evolutionary Biology. They use various techniques to conduct their research, including extracting DNA for PCR and conducting bioinformatic analysis.
December 2020: Dr. Woldemariam’s Lab
The Woldemariam lab works to identify novel regulatory mechanisms that orchestrate plant defense responses against insect herbivores. This lab utilizes a combination of transcriptomics, metabolomics, biochemistry and ecology techniques to dissect the molecular basis of ecological interactions. The main focus of this lab is to study plant’s defense mechanisms against predation by herbivores. These include direct defense mechanisms, such as JA signaling and hormonal crosstalk, as well as indirect mechanisms, such as plant to plant communication and mechanical defenses.
November 2020: Dr. Kress' Lab
Dr. Kress’s research aims to understand a fundamental question in molecular biology relevant to all organisms: how do cells regulate the expression of their genes? This lab works with Saccharomyces cerevisiae (bakers yeast) and utilizes a combination of genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry to investigate how two key steps in steps in gene expression, transcription and RNA splicing, are coordinated to ensure accurate and efficient gene expression. This research seeks to find new transcription-related proteins that can influence RNA splicing and identify if prion formation in yeast changes gene regulation by regulating RNA splicing.
October 2020: Dr. Thornton's Lab
The Thornton lab examines the chemical nature of plant stress responses, which relates to the broad question of global food security. Since plants are not able to run away from stress, they alter their biochemistry to best maintain their growth in response to stress. This lab uses plant genetics and biochemistry techniques to measure the role of specific enzymes in helping the plants respond to abiotic (heat, salt, drought) and biotic (caterpillars, bacteria) stress. They study these stresses in corn and the model plant, Arabidopsis. The main focuses of this lab include the role of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in plant responses to environmental stresses and the study of how plants acclimate to biochemical changes, including drought, heat, osmotic pressure, and insect damage.
January 2020: Dr. Dickinson's Lab
The Dickinson Lab works with marine invertebrates including coral, barnacles, oysters & lobsters. The main purpose of this lab is to explore the physiological ecology of marine invertebrates through various techniques such as hardness testing and SEM elemental analyses. The current projects in the lab include analyzing the inducible defense mechanisms in Crassostrea virginica (oysters), the effect of feeding concentrations on microhardness in Amphibalanus amphitrite (barnacles) and the ocean acidification effects on the structural and mechanical properties of Homerus americanus (american lobster).
December 2019: Dr. Wund's Lab
The Wund Lab works with the model organism Alaskan Threespine Stickleback. The main purpose of this lab group's research is to examine stickleback evolution through their morphology and behavior. The current projects in the lab include measuring differences in stickleback morphology to examine changes in body characteristics in response to changes in habitat and diet, along with comparing anti-predator responses of stickleback from lakes with native and invasive pike to see if predator response is socially learned or genetic.
November 2019: Dr. Elliott's Lab The Elliott Lab works with the model organism Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1, a common soil bacterium. The main purpose of this lab group's research is to use the ADP1 strain to better understand how large scale gene duplications and deletions occur. They are specifically looking into the yqgF gene by knocking it out of ADP1 and studying it in different ways. The current projects in this lab include how the genes are affected by antibiotics, how the ygqE and yqgF proteins interact, phenotype assays, making strains and looking at the frequency of these deletions, investigating if yqgE and yqgF co-transcribe or function together and testing if texin (toxin expression) activator plays a role in yqgF.
October 2019: Dr. Lovett's Lab
The Lovett lab spends a lot of time in the tank room working with an invasive species of green crab from the Northeast United states. They are looking at their responses to different bubbles of salinity in seawater. They do this by acclimating the crabs to a certain concentration of salinity and then changing this concentration and looking at the response of a specific hormone (MF) to this change. They are working on completing the gene sequence of the MF biosynthetic pathway to make primers to determine levels of gene and hormone expression that produce the MF pathway.
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