Lab News
2020 Recap:
- December 2020: Our RO1 grant entitled “Genome-wide DNA Secondary Structure Analysis to investigate DNA Fragility“ got renewed by NIH/NIGMS for four more years.
- October 2020: We have been awarded a pilot grant from UVA Cancer Center’s Community Outreach and Engagement program to study “Non-smoking-related chemical exposures and potential causality of DNA fragile sites in the formation of ALK, ROS1, and RET rearrangements in lung cancer”.
- June 2020: Karol Szlachta, Sandeep Singh, and Heather Raimer published their work “Topoisomerase II contributes to DNA secondary structure-mediated double-stranded breaks” in Nucleic Acids Research.
- March 2020: Sandeep Singh, Karol Szlachta, and Heather Raimer published their work “Pausing sites of RNA polymerase II on actively transcribed genes are enriched with DNA double-stranded breaks” in Journal of Biological Chemistry.
- January 2020: Karol Szlachta, Heather Raimer, and Laurey Comeau published their work “CNCC: An analysis tool to determine genome-wide DNA break end structure at single-nucleotide resolution” in BMC Genomics.
2019 Recap:
- May 2019: Heather Raimer successfully passes her Ph.D qualifying exam and becomes a Ph.D candidate.
- July 2019: Graduate student Heather Raimer’s CMB Training Grant is renewed for another year.
- July 2019: Graduate student Naomi Atkin receives a trainee award from the UVA Cancer Center for her work focusing on assessing individual susceptibility for cancer-causing chromosomal abnormalities by measuring DNA breaks.
- October 2019: Naomi Atkin and Heather Raimer co-author the review “Broken By the Cut: A Journey into the Role of Topoisomerase II on DNA Fragility” in Genes.
2018 Recap:
- July 2018: Karol Szlachta, Naomi Atkin, and Ryan Thys published their work on “Alternative DNA secondary structure formation affects RNA polymerase II promoter-proximal pausing in human” in Genome Biology.
- July 2018: Graduate student Heather Raimer receives the NIH Predoctoral Cell and Molecular Biology Training Grant.
- Februrary 2018: First-year graduate student Heather Raimer joins the lab!
2017 Recap
- Jan. 2017: Christine Lehman’s work on “DNA fragile site breakage as a measure of chemical exposure and predictor of individual susceptibility to form oncogenic rearrangements” is published in Carcinogenesis, 3: 293-301.
- May 2017: Naomi Atkin’s Training Grant is renewed for another year.
- June 2017: Congratulations to Dr. Yuh-Hwa Wang on her promotion to Professor!
- August 2017: Naomi Atkin successfully passes her Ph.D. qualifying exam and is now a Ph.D. candidate.
- Nov. 2017: Naomi Atkin attends the 1st Annual Commonwealth of Virginia Cancer Research Conference
2016 Recap
- Feb. 2016: Naomi Atkin, a first-year Ph.D. student, joins the lab.
- March 2016: Christine Lehman and Dr. Yuh-Hwa Wang attend Gordon Research Conference “DNA Damage, Mutation, and Cancer”
- May 2016: Congratulations to Christine Lehman for successfully defending her dissertation on “DNA Fragile Site Breakage as a Measure of Long-Term Chemical Exposure and Predictor of the Susceptibility to Form Chromosomal Rearrangements”
- May 2016: Naomi Atkin receives the NIH Predoctoral Cancer Training Grant on DNA fragility in breast cancer.
- July 2016: Dr. Yuh-Hwa Wang attends the FASEB Science Research Conference “Dynamic DNA Structure in Biology”
- Oct. 2016: Dr. Yuh Hwa Wang attends the American Society of Human Genetics Conference
- Nov. 2016: Christine Lehman, Ph.D. was awarded “Best Postdoc Presentation” at the Annual BMG Departmental Retreat.