The People in the Tucson Marine Phage Lab
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Matthew Sullivan, Principal investigator My research aims to elucidate the mechanisms of phage and host genome evolution, as well as explore the roles of ocean viruses in global biogeochemical cycling. |
POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCHERS |
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Elke Allers, post-doctoral researcher Elke arrived in Jan 2009 from the Max Planck Institute in Germany where her PhD thesis work centered upon using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) to identify particular marine microbial groups, and evaluate their physiological responses to experimental manipulations. Her TMPL research interests are in furthering FISH towards the high-throughput exploration of novel microbial lineages and phage-host interactions in marine systems. E-mail: eallers (at) email.arizona.edu |
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Jennifer Brum, post-doctoral researcher Jennifer arrived Jan 2010 from the University of Hawai‘i. At TMPL, she is currently working on several projects including: (i) studying viral ecology and metagenomics in the Southern Ocean through her NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Polar Regions Research, (ii) developing targeted viral metagenomics methods to specifically examine the genomes of wild viruses that contain genes of interest, and (iii) examining morphological traits of viruses in the global oceans through the Tara Ocean Expedition. |
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Karin Holmfeldt, post-doctoral researcher Karin arrived July 2010 from Kalmar University in Sweden where she established a Cellulophaga phage collection from the Baltic Sea for her PhD. At TMPL, she is interested in developing this Cellulophaga phage-host system as a new model system through genomics and experimental characterization. |
GRADUATE STUDENTS |
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Julio Cesar Ignacio Espinoza, PhD candidate Cesar hails from Oaxaca, Mexico and joined us in Aug 2008 and completed a 2 year masters degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He is now in the Ph.D. program in Molecular and Cellular Biology. His research is focused on the ecology and evolution of an abundant ocean viral group, the T4-like viruses. |
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Bonnie Hurwitz, PhD candidate Bonnie (a.k.a., "B" or "Bonnie B") joined us in September 2009. She has extensive informatic and databasing experience and has joined TMPL to tackle large-scale informatics problems. Her thesis is focused broadly on "Pacific Ocean viruses" making use of large, highly contextualized metagenomic datasets from from Scripps Pier, Monterey Bay line67, and LineP. |
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Cristina Howard, PhD candidate Cristina joined us as a MCB student January 2011. Coming with a Masters in Biotechnology, her broad interests include experimental work to understand the biology of marine phages and their interaction with their hosts and how this complements the ‘-omic’ (genomics, transcriptomics fand proteomics) branch of the lab. |
Sergei Solonenko, PhD candidate |
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UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHERS |
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Ryan Schenck, undergraduate researcher Ryan joined us in January 2011 to assist with the outreach biotech class at Tucson High Magnet School, and is continuing as an undergraduate researcher. Ryan is interested and involved in learning about bioinformatics and heterophage isolations. He is also assisting Dr. Jennifer Brum in assessing viral populations from the Tara Oceans expedition samples. |
Shelley Litton, undergraduate researcher Shelley joined us in February 2012 and is assisting Ann Gregory with generating 150 phage genomes. |
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Sarah Schwenck, undergraduate researcher Sarah will be joining us in May to work on quantitative TEM with Jennifer Brum. |
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STAFF |
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Bonnie Poulos, Assistant Staff Scientist Bonnie has been developing diagnostic procedures for shrimp pathogens since 1990. She also knows Tucson, hiking and the Sonoran desert. Bonnie is focused on optimizing methods such as FeCl3 precipitation for viral concentration and linker amplification for viral metagenomic library prep, as well as offering a supportive role in most lab projects starting with all things flow cytometry. |
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Becky Nankivell, Outreach Coordinator Becky joined us in late May 2010 from another microbiology lab in EEB. She is overseeing the public face and outreach projects of the lab, including managing the web site(s) and working on developing oceans exhibits at Biosphere 2. She also assists with information managment and other administration in the lab. |
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Ann Gregory, Research Assistant Ann joined us in August 2010, fresh from her undergraduate degree at Occidental College. After working in a variety of different labs as an undergraduate, Nina wanted to gain more research experience before charging forward into graduate studies. At TMPL, she hopes to gain more knowledge on different lab protocols and learn about the awesome world of marine viruses. |
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Natalie Solonenko, Research Assistant Natalie arrived in September 2010. She earned her Master's Degree in Integrative Biology from the University of South Carolina in 2009 exploring olfactory development in insects. After working a year in the Virology lab at the Texas Department of State Health Services, she decided to return to the world of research and is currently assisting Drs. Duhaime and Holmfeldt with their work. |
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Erica Beneze, Research Technician Erica joined us as a UA undergraduate in January 2010, and when she graduated in 2011, continued as a Research Technician. She is keenly interested in anything "marine" and is currently working on FISHing novel microbial lineages from our archived LineP samples under the direction of Dr. Elke Allers. |
