Mustoe Lab News

August

• Lab awarded NIH NIGMS R35 grant! This grant will provide $1.25M in funding over five years to support our research on improving chemical probing technologies and defining the role of structural dynamics in RNA function. To celebrate, we had a Mexican feast at a lab favorite - Cuchara.
• Welcome to Rebekah, an incoming Chemical, Physical & Structural Biology Program student, who will be rotating with us in Term 1.

June

• Lab awarded Beckman Young Investigator Award - The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation named our lab as one of 10 BYI awardees. This prestigious award provides $600,000 in funding over four years and will enable to us to develop some very exciting new technologies for studying RNA structure and its impact on development. Read more
• Welcome to Basim, an undergraduate through the SMART Scholar program, who is joining us for the summer from Michigan State University
• A fantastic RNA Society Meeting in the books! Khoa Doa, Ritwika Bose, and David Mitchell III presented outstanding (and very-well attended) posters, and Tony Mustoe gave a talk. We all enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones, learning about the exciting new discoveries taking place in the RNA world, and getting some mountain air in Boulder, CO

May

• Tony Mustoe gives a talk at the Department of Genetics retreat in Galveston

April

• Another birthday in the books (this time Tony’s)

March

• Congrats to Khoa Bose for winning a travel award to RNA Society 2022! Boulder here we come.

January

• Our lab turns two years old! We celebrated with some mini-golf downtown on Discovery Green. Not sure if Thomas Miller won, but we let him claim first on the podium anyways. I took one for the team by trying (unsuccessfully) for the wild hole-in-ones. That’s what happens when you leave the bench — you forget those shots rarely go in, but you still have to try!

December

• Who knew the lab had such outstanding decorating skills?!? It was no contest — we were the runaway winners of the THINC holiday decorating contest (no thanks to me).
• Congrats to Ritwika Bose for receiving the Chemical, Physical & Structural Biology Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award!

October

•  Welcome to rotation students Trevor and Justin (Chemical, Physical & Structural Biology Program)

August

• Welcome to rotation student Andrew (Quantitative & Computational Biosciences Program)
• Welcome to Thomas Miller, our new technician and recent grad from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

June

•  Welcome to Lauren, a summer undergrad joining us from Washington University in St. Louis

April

• Welcome to our second postdoc David Mitchell! David brings a wealth of expertise in RNA, having developed exciting new probing reagents in Phil Bevilacqua’s group, and uncovering novel folding mechanisms in Rick Russell’s group. Excited to see what’s next!

March

• Congrats to Ritwika Bose and Khoa Doa for passing their qualifying exams. Very well deserved! I predict great things…
• Welcome to our first postdoc Irfana Saleem, who is joining us from the Band lab at University of Nebraska where she did excellent work elucidating a novel RNA binding protein. We are lucky to add her expertise to our group!

January

1/2021 — Welcome to rotation student Justin (Quantitative & Computational Biosciences Program)

November

• Congrats to Ritwika Bose and Khoa Dao on giving stellar first thesis advisory committee meetings! Lots of great feedback and ideas spurred by their work. In addition to mastering his project, Khoa has become an expert in Houston Banh Mi’s, which we celebrated with afterwards.

September

• Welcome to rotation students Brian (Chemical, Physical & Structural Biology Program) and Maddie (Cancer & Cell Biology Program)

May

• Welcome to Ritwika Bose and Khoa Doa, the lab’s first graduate students! Sadly we had to celebrate over Zoom, but hopefully we can have a proper party soon! Stay tuned for what are going to be some really cool discoveries!

April

• Congrats to Hashim Al-Hashimi on the NAS Award in Molecular Biology! Was a ton of fun celebrating with old friends Hashim’s and the labs fantastic accomplishments over the years!

January

• Welcome to Jenn Cotter, the lab’s first official member! We are so excited to have such a great scientist join us as we build the lab and get our first experiments started!