Research labs in the department are extremely well equipped for the individual research needs of faculty and students with instruments dedicated to their individual research needs.
In addition, members of the department have access to state-of-the-art core facilities that house multi-user instruments and provide a variety of analytical services. The equipment includes HPLC’s, FPLC’s, steady-state fluorimeters, life-time fluorimeters with laser excitation, UV/VIS spectrophotometers, ultracentrifuges, high resolution magnets for structure determination and imaging, X-ray facilities, sophisticated computing systems for analyzing structural and imaging data as well as modeling, and thermocyclers in addition to standard molecular and biochemical equipment.
Laboratories & PIs
Our general research interests are in the dynamic protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions that are required to maintain the structure and to preserve the genetic integrity of DNA.
The focus of the Bungert laboratory is to analyze mechanisms regulating gene expression during erythroid cell differentiation.
Dr. Gentry is Director of the NIH-funded Lafora Epilepsy Cure Initiative (LECI). The LECI is a consortium of Lafora disease (LD) researchers from around the world funded by a NIH P01 (PI: Gentry) to define the basic mechanisms of LD and translate the findings into pre-clinical therapies.
The Kladde Lab focuses on understanding the dynamic interplay in transcription between various layers of epigenetic regulation, including nucleosome positioning, histone modifications, and DNA methylation.
Dr. Li’s lab focuses on understanding the regulation of selenium metabolism and lipid quality as well as how they impact cell death in cancers.
The Lu lab is interested in epigenetic regulation and signal transduction in cancer epithelial-mesenchymal transition, immune evasion, and therapy resistance.
The McKenna Lab centers on understanding the structure-function relationships which govern the multitude of intricate interactions required for successful host cell infection by ssDNA viruses.
Dr. Merritt’s Lab focus on developing methods for assessing metabolic turnover and energy metabolism, and how to apply these new technologies to diverse pathophysiologies including heart failure, cancer, and diabetes mellitus.
Our goal is to understand the molecular mechanisms that govern RNA repair and translate this fundamental understanding into new RNA editing tools for applications in science and medicine.
Dr. Sun’s lab has developed a number of new mass spectrometry-based methodologies to profile and image complex carbohydrate molecules with single-cell sensitivity and fine spatial resolution to assess microenvironmental influences with sophisticated machine learning software suite for data analysis.
The Vander Kooi lab focuses on determining the mechanism of physical interactions underlying human disease and fundamental biological processes at an atomic level.
The overarching goal of the Xie Lab research is to understand how non-coding RNAs and RBPs contribute to gene regulation in human health and disease.
The Zhao lab is interested in using cryo-EM to determine the molecular mechanism by which membrane proteins sense and transduce signals
