Gary Franke
Ph.D. Graduate Student

Email: gffranke@syr.edu
Telephone: 315-443-3748

Kangze He
Ph.D. Graduate Student on Rotation

Email: khe@syr.edu

Kangze is working on a group of novel yeast genes whose deletion causes sensitivity or resistance to specific plant derived triterpene glycosides. These compounds disturb fungal membranes and thus may provide insight to fungal mechanisms controlling membrane composition and homeostasis. One of the genes of particular interest is a novel serine/threonine kinase whose deletion leads to TTG resistance.

Steve Bowen
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Steve is working with Nancy and using the yeast two-hybrid system to help identify proteins involved in the localization and function of Pxl1p. He also has his own project studying a novel and essential gene in yeast that appears to also be present and conserved in most, if not all other eukaryotes.

Lisa Knapp
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Lisa is also focusing on studies of Pxl1p localization and its role in Rho1 GTPase mediated signaling. She is employing a set of strains carrying deletions of different Rho1 pathway regulators, effectors and downstream targets and a reporter gene construct to assess how pathway signaling is altered when different regulators are missing or inactivated due to mutation. She is also working with Steve to screen a collection of deletion strains representing approximately 90 different genes functioning in cell polarity for strains that fail to localize a GFP-Pxl1 fusion protein.

Aaron Yang
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Aaron is an Honors thesis student whose work is focused on identifying functions of a family of proteins in yeast that are similar to synaptotagmins present in higher eukaryotic genomes. Deletion of at least one of these genes from the yeast genome appears to lead to resistance of cells to triterpene glycoside growth effects. Synaptotagmins are proteins that contain well-conserved C2 domains that bind calcium and affect membrane dynamics during vesicle trafficking. Aaron is also working with Guohong to further examine the roles played by different yeast protein mannosyl transferases in the posttranslational modification of specific domains present in yeast adhesins.

Mingliang Zhang
Postdoctoral Associate
Ming’s studies in the lab have focused on fungal adhesin modifications and functions. He is presently a postodoctoral associate in Gerda Breitwieser’s laboratory.

Daniel Chirinos
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Dan is a recent SU graduate (’03) who, working with Virginia, played a leading role in the functional genomics analyses of yeast loci involved in cellular responses to triterpene glycosides.