Iqra Ahmad – Iqra is a sophomore who joined lab as an intrepid freshman. She is currently wreaking havoc on a biochemical pathway in H. pylori that creates acetyl phosphate to see the effects on gene expression mediated by TCS’s. Although she claims she wants to go to medical school, sources tell me her inner most ambition is to create a lab band dedicated to ancient jingles of 1960’s TV commercials

Sarah Berliner. Sarah is junior, in her second year in the lab and aspires to become a physician! In our lab, she is playing with “Dark Matter”; a gene encoding a protein encoding a protein of unknown function, but found nowhere outside the genus Helicobacter. A native of Croatia, she is teaching some of us how to speak Croatian—“Kako ste moji mali mikrobi”

Joanna He – Joanna is a sophomore in our lab. Her projects span the role of DNA methylation on the expression of a small regulatory RNA molecule and the computational aspect of methylome sequence data mining Joanna has a secret longing for the theater and will one day have a featured role in an off-Broadway screen play mash up of Cats and the Pirates of Penzance!

Anjali Krishnan. Anjali is a sophomore Biology major in her first year in our lab.Her project involves the role of lysine acetylation in the functioning of a Helicobacter transcription factor. Fun fact; Anjali is assembling a band that plays hip hop music with bassoons and tubas!

Yarik Posnyak. Yarik is a junior CAMS (Computational and Applied Mathmatics and Statistics) major/Pre-Medical student in his third year in our lab. Yarik is a charter member of our bioinformatic/methylomics team

Charlotte Robinson. Char is a junior biology major from North Carolina and a member of the W&M Women’s track team. She is examining “Dark Matter” in Helicobacter – a gene found nowhere else but this genus and with no known function, but it is expressed in response to exogenous nitric oxide. As a sprinter, we expect Char to finish her project in record time!

Mallory Junker – Mallory is a senior honors scholar who joined the lab in fall semester 2023. Her project involves the regulation of expression of a Helicobacter specific protein by means of an anti-sense RNA molecule. Mallory recently admitted that she did, in fact, just fall out of a coconut tree!

Sara Natarajan – A junior in the lab, Sara is examining post-translational modification of a response regulator.

Allison Hubbell. Allison is a junior in the lab and her project examines the role of acetylation of a transcription factor on the levels of mRNA for affected genes.

Jonah Spotts. A sophomore in the lab, Jonah is currently weighing his potential options for projects

Monica Xu. Monica is a sophomore Biology and Math double major. Monica is exploring the role of a regulatory small RNA molecule in the expression H. pylori genes and began as a precocious freshman in lab.. Monica is also an accomplished dancer.

Richa Zade– Richa is a Senior biology major planning for graduate school in immunology. Richa is trying to determine the identity of two proteins induced in H. pylori upon the loss of a regulatory RNA molecule. I can’t wait to see how she makes her results work in a Venn diagram! Richa loves those Venn diagrams! Something about those circles and colors!!

Zoe Lorenz. Zoe is a junior Biology major/Pre-Medical student in her second year in our lab.Her project involves the role of nitric oxide in the expression of a Helicobacter outer membrane protein.

Morgan Wood. Morgan is a senior in the lab working on the role of acetone carboxylase in H. pylori growth in vitro. Morgan is a goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team (in her spare time!!!)

Payton Nolan– Payton is a junior Biology major intending medical school and a career in the military. Payton is developing a means to determine the level of a Nitric Oxide induced protein via western blot and an epitope tagged version of the protein. I believe I’m safe in saying Payton is the only lab member to ever jump out of an helicopter in flight! Ask her about it!!

Keslar Just – Keslar’s project in the lab involves determining the role of phosphomimetic amino acid substitutions in a response regulator protein of H. pylori during laboratory acid stress.

Sarah Patterson – Sarah loves big data (and she cannot lie!) and so she too is immersed in our data on SMRT (single molecule real-time) sequencing of the methylomes of some mutants of H. pylori and various environmental stressors.

Trung Phi – Trung is a 2nd year pre-med student. His projects determining the role of phosphomimetic amino acid substitutions in a response regulator protein of H. pylori during laboratory acid stress. He is also a classically trained violinist AND plays a mean kazoo and recorder!