Alex Merz, PhD— not entirely fearless leader | cv | mastodon | cell biology tree | merza@uw.edu
Microbiology; biochemistry; cell biology
Rachael Plemel, BS — research scientist | plemer@uw.edu
Remote Lab Manager, development of novel probes for cell biology
Luther Davis, PhD — research scientist | lwd@uw.edu
Genetic analyses of Golgi entry and egress
Justin Applegate — biochemistry grad student
Pilus biogenesis in Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Emma Mackey — biochemistry grad student
Biochemistry of Sly1, SNAREs, and tethering factors in the early secretory pathway
Zoey Litt — biochemistry grad student
Investigating the host cell receptor for the Neisseria gonorrhoeae adhesion protein PilC
Sena Noaman — chemistry grad student – Keller Group
Lipid-lipid phase separation in yeast vacuole membranes
Stephanie McLaughlin, M.D — UW Medicine infectious disease physician
Sophina Chen — undergrad
Mutational analysis of the yeast tethering factor USO1
Anthony (Phat) Luong — undergrad
Rittika Saha — undergrad
Yejin Kwon — undergrad
Ex-officio member
Mengtong (Tom) Duan (research scientist) — PhD student, Bioengineering, Caltech | As an undergrad and research scientist in the lab, Tom received several honors including a Mary Gates Research Scholarship Award and the Donald J. Hanahan Research Scholarship Award at UW. Tom is now a bioengineering graduate student studying genetically encoded ultrasound contrast agents in the Shapiro lab at Caltech.
Biochemistry of SNAREs, SM proteins, and Sec17
Lab Photos
Alumni
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Chantelle Levielle — Scientist, Allen Institute for Cell Biology | LinkedIn Chantelle worked closely with us as a joint grad student with the Keller Laboratory Liquid-Liquid phase separation in the membranes of living cells |
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Caitlin Cornell — James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley | LinkedIn Caitlin worked closely with us as a grad student with the Keller Laboratory Liquid-Liquid phase separation in the membranes of living cells |
Emma Miller — research scientist
Sara Quinn — undergrad
Alfredo Ruiz-Rivera — undergrad
Michelle Chicas — grad student—UW Biochemistry Vásquez lab
Adam Nguyen — grad student—BPSD Cambell Lab
Ariel Lin (research scientist) — grad student (UW Molecular Engineering)
Biochemistry of Sly1, SNAREs, and tethering factors in the early secretory pathway
Angela Lisovsky (research scientist) — Medical student, Western University COMP | LinkedIn Characterization of pilus-associated proteins in Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Ally Kong — undergrad
Malia Clark — undergrad
Tomoka Takenaka — visiting scientist (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
Reconstitution of ER-Golgi docking and fusion.
Jerome Cattin (grad student) — jeromeco@uw.edu
Jerome worked closely with us as a grad student with the Ailion group — Biogenesis of dense core secretory granules.
Scott Rayermann — grad student—UW Chemistry
Spontaneous order in organelle membranes.
Glennis Rayermann — grad student—UW Chemistry
Spontaneous order in organelle membranes.
Rachel Flores — grad student UW—Biochemistry Davis Lab
Assembly of AP-3 coat complex at the Golgi.
Weisha Liu — undergrad
Novel Rab-effector interactions.
Fariah Qasim — undergrad
SNARE-SM interactions.
Josh Milnes — undergrad
Chris Brett, Ph.D. (postdoc) —Professor of Biology and Canada Research Chair II, Concordia University, Montreal. Chris is a Vancouver, B.C. native who received his Bachelor’s (1996) and Master’s (1999) degrees in Physiology at the University of British Columbia. He joined the lab in 2005 after completing a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he studied the global control of pH and the biology of the late endosomal sodium/hydrogen antiporter Nhx1p. In the Merz Lab, Chris had several projects centering on the regulation of Rab GTPase effectors in the late endolysosomal system. In 2010 he started his own lab at Concordia.
Elizabeth Manrao, Ph.D. (postdoc) — Data Scientist, Microsoft | LinkedIn
Patch clamp electrophysiology of isolated yeast vacuoles (a joint effort with the Gordon Lab).
Hannah Chapin, Ph.D. (postdoc) — Science Teacher, Seattle Academy | LinkedIn
Catabolic membrane traffic in C. elegans (a joint effort with the Miller lab).
Dan Nickerson, Ph.D. (postdoc) — Associate Professor of Biology, California State University, San Bernadino
Rab effectors and GAPS; endocytic stress response; membrane fusion; novel trafficking probes.
Margaret Sheng-Ying Lo, Ph.D. (grad student) | Associate Director, Clinical Chemistry and Preanalytics, Geisinger Laboratories. | Margaret received her B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College. Her biochemical studies of Rab small G-proteins pioneered rigorous and quantitative assays of vesicle tethering and revealed that a subset of the Rabs have an unexpected, intrinsic tethering activity. Margaret has also developed a new system for characterizing and selecting proteins and peptides with novel membrane-binding affinities.
Cortney (Angers) Chertova, Ph.D. (grad student) — Executive Director, Global Scientific Communications – Astellas | LinkedIn. Cortney obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. In Cortney’s thesis work, she examined the role of the C-Vps/HOPS complex in AP-3-mediated transport to the yeast vacuole. Cortney’s research was sponsored in part by the UW’s CMB Training Grant, funded by the NIH.
Braden Lobingier, Ph.D. (grad student) — Assistant Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology, OHSU | Lobingier Lab
Braden received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Whitman College. His biochemical studies of the CORVET and HOPS complexes revealed key information about the architecture and Rab binding activities of CORVET and HOPS subunits. His work on the SM-family protein Vps33 has led to genuine breakthroughs in our understanding of how Vps33 engages SNARE proteins and has set an agenda for our future work. Braden was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the von Zastrow Lab @ UCSF.
Andrew Paulsel, Ph.D. (grad student) Andrew received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Indiana, and worked in biotech in Southern California prior to joining our program. Andrew contributed to the characterization of HOPS and CORVET, and discovered a second Rab5-family GEF in budding yeast. This discovery paves the way to a better understanding of endosomal maturation.
Mattthew Schwartz, Ph.D. (grad student) — Postdoctoral Fellow, Jorgensen Lab, HHMI/University of Utah. Matt received his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He constructed and characterized a set of SNARE mutants that freeze the fusion process and serve as vehicles to carry optical and chemical probes into the heart of the membrane fusion machinery. A particularly exciting mutant isolated by Matt causes a delay in the kinetics of membrane fusion without altering the kinetics of docking. Matt’s research was sponsored by the UW’s CMB Training Grant, which is funded by the NIH.
Erina Kitano, Ph.D. (visiting grad student) — Erina spent a year in the lab during her grad work, as an exchange student from the UW’s sister school, the University of Kobe, Japan. Erina currently works in IT.
Sarah Mirahsani, B.S. — undergrad — Medical Student (UW SoM, e17).
Michelle Tran, B.S.— undergrad
Tiffany Wu, B.S.— undergrad
Mary Morcos, M.D. (undergrad) — Physician, Sutter Health. Mary was an undergraduate researcher in the lab. She worked on the structure and functions of Vps-C complexes.
Debra Sprague, B.S. (Biology), Ph.D. (English) (undergrad) — Research Scientist, UW Center for Clinical and Epidemiological Research. Debra joined our lab after returning to UW for a degree in Biology. In her project, which was sponsored by an HHMI undergraduate reseach fellowship, Debra worked with Rachael Plemel to define the C-Vps/HOPS interactome.