The road to investigating an ancestral mammal, Tenrec ecaudatus, as a model for mammalian heart regeneration I am currently a 2nd year integrative physiology PhD student in Dr. Frank van Breukelen’s laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The core focus of my dissertation is to investigate the physiology of Tenrec ecaudatus through functional imaging. Tenrecs are bizarre basoendothermic Afrotherian mammals. They are endemic to Madagascar and its surrounding islands where ambient temperatures often fluctuate >30°C and <20°C. Interestingly,…

"I believe, as you know... in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Furthermore I have plotted and triangulated the vectors of the interconnectedness of all things and traced them to a beach in Bermuda which it is therefore necessary for me to visit from time to time in the course of my investigations. I wish it were not the case, since, sadly, I am allergic to both the sun and rum punches, but then we all have our crosses to…

Update: The application period has concluded and selections will be made later this month. Thank you to everyone to applied! The application period is now open for our March 2023 workshop! We encourage you to apply for this NSF-sponsored learning, networking, and adventuring opportunity. The workshop will be held Amazonas, Brazil from 13-21 March 2023. Participants will tour the INPA facility at the initiation of the workshop and the remaining week will be on boats navigating the Rio Negro with…

As the RCN heads into its final year, we want to remind all our members that the final workshop is still happening! We're continuing to finalize everything with our (floating) event hosts, and will be opening the application form in December! March 2023 - Amazonas, Brazil   Stay tuned!

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Simon Lailvaux’s lab at the University of New Orleans. My research focuses on how varying energetic environments affect aspects of green anole (Anolis carolinensis) phenotypes and ultimately their offspring. To tackle my research questions, I used methods such as measuring gene expression of hormones involved in the response to varying environmental pressures. I wanted to expand my ability to identify and measure mechanisms that link the genotype to the phenotype. The Research Coordination…

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Michael Romero’s lab at Tufts University studying the broad effects of long-term chronic stress on the physiology of house sparrows. I noticed that the majority of chronic stress studies involved subjecting animals to one or two bouts of stress. While these studies are useful, they are not very ecologically relevant to what animals actually experience in the wild, which would likely involve more bouts of stress in their lifetime. In 2021, I conducted…

We received an announcement to share with the RCN members regarding the upcoming New England Future Faculty Workshop, presented by Northeastern University in partnership with Harvard Medical School. This year’s virtual workshop will be held on July 27th and 28th, and prepares participants for entry into the academic job market through sessions on finding their institutional fit, developing research, teaching, and diversity statements, honing interview and negotiation skills, time management, and planning their first year as faculty.  The workshop was created to serve members of groups whose representation in faculty positions is…

Dr. Irene Kaplow, Carnegie Mellon ‘Relating enhancer genetic variation across mammals to complex phenotypes using machine learning’

Dr. Mira Han, University of Nevada Las Vegas ‘Learning the effect of 3D genome organization on gene expression’

Dr. Kathleen Keough, Fauna Bio ‘Genome evolution over multiple timescales and dimensions'

Dr. Jason Podrabsky, Portland State University ‘Epigenetic regulation of development, dormancy, and stress tolerance in a vertebrate extremophile’

I am an NSF postdoctoral scholar in the van Breukelen laboratory at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I am a comparative physiologist fundamentally interested in the evolution of endothermy. There are numerous robust hypotheses or models to explain the evolution of endothermy/homeothermy in mammals. 1) The Body-Size Reduction Hypothesis predicts that as therapsids (mammalian ancestors) decreased in size, there was a required increase in metabolism. Earlier therapsids were generally large, typically 20-100 kg. As a result, these animals had…

Any RCN members interested in attending the upcoming workshop at UNLV, Accessing Approaches to Study Epigenetic Regulation, should register as soon as possible if they'll be requesting travel funding from the RCN. Selections will likely be made around mid-April and the option to apply will be removed from the registration form at that time. We hope to see you there!

I work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as a wildlife biologist in Fairbanks, Alaska. My focus is physiological research on Fish and Game managed wildlife species, and I investigate questions that can be used to inform management biologists. I have been involved in projects that extract steroid hormones from keratin tissues since reading about the extraction of cortisol from grizzly bear hair by Brian Macbeth and coauthors in 2010. This led to work with harbor seal whiskers,…

Looking to join us in Las Vegas this summer for the 2022 RCN Workshop -- Accessing Approaches to Study Epigenetic Regulation? The dates are now locked in (June 6th & 7th, 2022) and our members can register using our online form Updates and announcements (confirmed speakers, agenda, etc.) will be posted here - stay tuned!

Our 2022 workshop, Accessing Approaches to Study Epigenetic Regulation, has been tentatively scheduled for June 6th and 7th, at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. We will open registrations in the next month or two, after some initial planning meetings. Updates will be posted here and on the RCN's Twitter. We hope to see you there!

I am a co-PI in a project (FAPESP/NSF Scales of Biodiversity) that seeks to investigate the relationship between aspects of the biology of different species of snakes with the interspecific and intraspecific variability of the venom. The research is conducted at Instituto Butantan, an institute known for the research on poisonous snakes and the production of antivenom in Brazil. The study of venom composition and variability involves different levels of organization, and one of the aspects explored is the ontogenetic…

It was a Saturday afternoon in February 2019 when I received a message from Dr Vera da Silva from the National Institute for Amazonian Research inviting me to have dinner at her place with some visiting researchers. My plan for that night in Manaus, Brazil, was to have some friends at home before joining the biggest and wildest (and most famous) street party in Brazil, Carnival. For some reason, that invitation seemed more important than usual, and Carnival was postponed…

g2p2pop Members - The College of Biological Sciences at University of Minnesota is seeking a Postdoctoral Associate, and one of our members (and former workshop guest speaker) asked that this be shared with the RCN for a signal-boost. Full posting and link to apply follow below: ****** About the Job   Post-Doctoral Associate - Modeling epigenetic pathways to regulate homeostasis in diverse mammal species.   We are seeking a highly motivated and collaborative postdoc to work on a 4-year NSF-sponsored…

Rachel Johnston (Broad Institute / Zoo New England) "The genomic and phenotypic consequences of breeding status in social mole-rats" Audio Only - Download Slides   Athma Pai (UMass Chan Medical School) "RNA as a dynamic molecule: how and when our cells regulate mRNA splicing" Audio Only - Download Slides   Lauren Wasson (Harvard Medical School) "Integration of RNA-seq and chromatin accessibility for genome-wide expression analysis" Audio Only - Download Slides   Kathleen Morrill (UMassMed / Broad Institute) "Low-pass sequencing +…