Current Grad Students & Their Research Projects:

Tugba Colak -

Tugba began in Fall '06 working in Dr. Juliet Spencer's lab on HCMV, specifically examining the Simian CMV model.

Jason Higa - Jason has been working with Dr. Tzagarakis-Foster since Fall '06 on a project entitled Identification of Novel DAX-1 Interacting Proteins via Two-Hybrid Assays - The project revolves around finding possible regulatory pathways of the orphan nuclear receptor DAX-1, which is known to downregulate the activity of steroid hormone receptors such as receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. This will be accomplished by two-hybrid systems primarily in yeast to screen for potential protein-protein interactions and pull-down assays to confirm binding of interacting proteins with DAX-1.

Tori Manning -

Tori is also participating in Dr. Spencer's lab. She began her research in Fall 2006.

James Nachtwey - James is currently finishing up his thesis with Dr. Spencer on HCMV, here is his abstract: Cytomegalovirus Interleukin-10 Inhibits Cytokine Expression Through Regulation of NF-?B Transcriptional Activity in THP-1 Monocytes.

Zahra Salamat - Working with Dr. Sullivan, Zahra has been examining Schistostoma since last year.

Recently Completed Thesis Research:

Debbie Ruelas (pictured below) graduated Spring '07, her reasearch with Dr. Sullivan produced several publications, see Debbie's thesis abstract: Effects of UVB on larvae of Schistosoma mansoni and the snail intermediate host, Biomphalaria glabrata

You can also access Debbies entire thesis here.

Lance Stapleton (pictured below) graduated Spring '07. His work in Dr. Spencer's lab was part of an ongoing project to understand Human cytomegalovirus, see Lance's thesis abstract: Cloning and expression of chimeric receptors to characterize the orphan US27 viral GPCR.