Burke Lab

We are shocked and deeply saddened by the recent untimely passing of our MMG departmental friend and colleague, Dr. Gina Lee. Gina warmed everyone around her with her joyfulness, laugh, and smile. She was a gentle soul who always had a funny story to make everyone around her smile. She was taken from us far too soon. Gina was an expert in RNA metabolism in the context of kidney cancer and her research legacy will endure forever. We will miss her deeply and will always remember the light that she brought to our department and everyone at UCI.

Meggie presented her work at the T32 cancer retreat at Lake Arrowhead, while her apprentice Michael presented at the “Excellence in Research” undergrad symposium on campus. Great job representing the lab #teamcancer!

Jessie did an excellent job last week presenting at our Departmental seminar series. She is seeking to identify the molecular explanation for human rickettsiosis by identifying antimicrobials that restrict Rickettsia in animal reservoirs but not in human cells. She’s established a number of collaborations on campus including with Nir Drayman and is bringing a number of new techniques to the lab, including a CRISPR-based screen. Keep it up Jessie!

With their March Madness brackets completed, the lab takes a trip to BWWs to eat some spicy Blazin’ wings. Some handled it well (Jessie, Meggie), while others might have struggled (Thomas, Ben, Alejandro). Good luck with your picks!

Happy Holidays from the lab! We had a delicious panoply of food from around the globe, perhaps a new lab tradition. Congrats Jessie on winning the cookie decorating competition, and to everyone else, all of whom did a much better job than me. Also congrats to whoever ended up with the raw potato in the Yankee swap – don’t let that go to waste!

The 2023 MMG holiday party was a hit this year, it felt exciting with lots of new folks in the department and with Dr. Hertel being appointed our Department Chair during the party! There was a baking competition (somehow all the cheesecakes won top spots) and a lab ornament decoration. Our Rickettsia-themed ornament got an…unexpected prize (see last pic)!

Congratulations Michelle and all the co-authors! We celebrated with specialty donuts – yum. Now comes the task of publishing, Thomas will try to keep his blood pressure low. Check out the preprint here, coming to a journal near you (hopefully) soon: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.02.56

The lab celebrated Michael’s birthday, and we all reminisce about the times when we were young. Good times.

Meggie and Jessie continue troubleshooting finicky assays – thus is the life of a graduate student. #ThatsScience

We’re very excited to share the first paper from the lab “Host glutathione is required for Rickettsia parkeri to properly septate, avoid ubiquitylation, and survive in macrophages” now available online as a preprint on BioRxiv! https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.02.560592v1

This project has been spearheaded by our technician Michelle Sun, congratulations Michelle! The title pretty much says it all, but what it doesn’t convey are the very cool super-resolution images showing how glutathione depletion causes Rickettsia to chain. We propose the idea that reducing environments are host-associated molecular patterns (HAMPs), sensed by cytosolic bacteria as a cue to initiate virulence.

To all the new CMB and other graduate students, welcome to UCI! The sun might be setting earlier but don’t worry you can still head to the beach for another few (12) months.

Journal club this week was a paper from Andrew Olive’s lab on CRISPR screening in macrophages, which Jessie is optimizing and we’re excited to be performing a forward genetic screen in host cells. The Cancer Research Institute had a picnic yesterday, thanks for putting that together CRI!

We’re busy writing manuscripts and are excited to share our new findings with the world 🙂 I’m also busy writing my first R01 and R21 – I need a more comfortable chair. Fingers crossed on these submissions, check in next month to see if we have submitted a manuscript!

The lab visits Paradise Dynasty for happy hour dumplings for Camille’s last day of rotating. The cheese dumpling is a surprising hit. Best of luck in med school this year Camille!