news

The lab attends NWSDB

The whole lab attended the Northwest Regional Society for Developmental Biology meeting at Friday Harbor Labs. Some highlights include:

• learning about the developmental biology research in the PNW!
• ferry rides (unfortunately no marine mammals were spotted)
• tide pooling at Lime Kiln
• Michelle presenting a poster
• … and winning an award for it! 🎉

  

  

  

  

  

is it spring?? 🌸

It’s been a beautiful week so we took some time to admire the cherry blossoms & have a picnic with the Bryant lab. Marcel reminds us that we still live in Seattle, and we should be prepared for rain. We’re also excited to have Hayden Gizinski, a first year MCB student, on board for her spring rotation!

 

The lab(s) turned one year-old in January!

We had a celebration with the Bryant Lab, Gilliespie Lab, and Kong Lab to celebrate! We are grateful to have such a great community of labs surrounding us (especially Claudia).

Two new members – Lily & Makenna

Lily is a Biochemistry graduate student who is rotating with us this winter quarter. She is working with Michelle to identify some very basic but important facts about cell shape change during tubule morphogenesis.

Makenna is a second year undergraduate Biochemistry student. She is working with Megan and Vesta on what is now known as “team tube”!

We’re lucky to have them both!

Submissions!

Makenna, Megan, and Claudia all had some significant submissions at the end of January. To celebrate we got cakes from Paper Cake Shop.

Marcel gets philosophical

Marcel is interested in understanding different “schemas” to support researchers – he’s encouraging us all to be brave and open as we sail into the unknown.

We had a joint Bryant, Kwon, & Vásquez lab inaugural pumpkin carving event! Thanks to Isabel, Michelle, & Vesta for organizing this fun event! Thanks to all the carvers for participating!

Lab outing to the aquarium!

After some deliberation and possibly overly complicated decision-making. We went to the Seattle Aquarium, admired all the marine creatures…and then ate some poke bowls 😛

The lab’s first recombinant strain!

Michelle decided that she didn’t want to wait for the outcome of a cross every time she did an experiment, so she set about planning and executing a strategy to make a recombinant strain that would save her from making that cross. It turns out elements she was trying to get together were quite close together so she had to screen quite a few lines before finding her hit, but she did it!

Newcomers

This summer two intrepid high school researchers joined the Vásquez Lab, Rishik Chakrabarti and Melissa Calderón Bracho. We were fortunate to have them bring their curiosity and perspectives to lab.

Cause for celebration

Michelle not only applied but also received the Cell and Molecular Biology Training Grant. This training grant will support her research for the next 1-2 years. Michelle developed a creative research proposal to identify how cell shape informs final organ form. Her hard work on her proposal and presentation were rewarded. We celebrated with boba!

Lab outing with friends

The Vasquez lab is incredibly fortunate to be honorary members of the Kwon Lab. They’ve welcomed us into their group meetings, let us use their fly stations, and even invited us to join a lab hike of Tolmie peak!

FLY ROOM IS IN ACTION

After 9 months… the Vasquez lab finally has a functioning fly room thanks to Vesta’s hard work!

what’s on deck?

Isabel Mejia Natividad, a first year MCB student, will be rotating in the this Fall quarter. Megan Yi, a rising sophomore, will be joining the lab to do her undergraduate research.

We are almost 6 months old and in the past couple of months we tripled in size!

After doing her spring quarter rotation in the lab, Michelle Chicas, a first year biochemistry graduate student bravely joined the lab as the Vásquez lab’s first ever graduate student!!!

Vesta Baumgartner joined the lab as a Research Scientist in May! She is fearlessly tackling fly husbandry in the face of several bad batches of fly food, the laminator, and naming all the things in lab.

We are still down one incubator, but the confocal is up, running, and churning out beautiful data. We are super excited for what the summer will bring! Stay tuned for updates to the people page for Michelle and Vesta’s bios!

The lab opened its doors on January 3rd and 56 days in it’s already starting to look like a lab! Albeit with a couple of false starts – including all 82 fly stocks from Bloomington dead on arrival x____X, luckily the second order arrived last Friday and everyone looks alive and healthy!

There are still countless reagents and pieces of equipment to order but the lab’s confocal arrives this week!

Also – here is our ad for a research scientist [update: hired!] please apply spread the word or apply if interested! If you’ll be at the annual fly meeting in Chicago (March 1-5) or NW Dev Bio (Mar 15-18) meeting  – say hi to Claudia!

 

 

The Vásquez lab opens its doors January 2023!