Department of Genetics August Newsletter

Department of Genetics

August 2025

The prestigious award supports early-career scientists conducting biomedical research that could inform the cause and treatment of human disease.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received an $11.85 million grant to create a resource for the WashU and national research communities to study the growing number of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders known to be caused by a single gene mutation.

Jennifer E. Phillips-Cremins, PhD, an international leader in understanding 3D genome structure and how it affects brain development and neurological diseases, has been named a BJC Investigator at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Phillips-Cremins will join the Department of Genetics as the James McDonnell Professor and have a dual appointment in the Department of Neuroscience.

Congratulations to postdoctoral researcher Anjali Yadav in the Egervari lab on receiving the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience Small Grant! Her project is titled “Metabolic reprogramming of the hippocampus by the ketogenic diet in Alzheimer’s disease”.

Congrats to postdoctoral researchers Huma Naz and Wei Feng in the Zhao lab on receiving the 2025 Travel Award Grant for the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) Conference “The Changing Brain” taking place on August 18 – 20, 2025 in Irvine California.

Congratulations to Nisar Ahmed, a postdoctoral researcher in the Meers Lab, who was awarded the Edward P. Evans Postdoctoral Position for Myelodysplatic Syndromes (MDS)! Nisar’s work in the lab is focused on understanding how epigenomic lesions that occur during the early stages of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) contribute to disease progression. As part of his award, he will embark on a new research direction using single-cell epigenome profiling in in vitro models of hematopoietic stem cell development to mimic the early stages of MDS and AML acquisition.

Congratulations to Adriana Ramirez, a former Opportunities in Genomics Research (OGR) Postbaccalaureate Scholar in the Meers Lab, who completed her postbac program and matriculated into the Molecular Genetics and Genomics (MGG) PhD program at WashU this fall!! In the Meers Lab, Adriana studied mechanisms of pioneer transcription factor navigation of chromatin barriers to their molecular and developmental function. We wish Adriana well in her next steps!

Congrats to postdoctoral researcher Dr. Allyson Schreiber in the Dougherty lab on receiving the Marshall Klaus award from the American Academy of Pediatrics!

Aksheetha Santhoshkumar in the Zhao lab finished her summer intership as a scholar in the Young Scientist Program under the mentorship of Dr. Huma Naz. She did a wonderful job presenting her research at the Young Scientist Program 2025 Summer Focus Final Symposium.

Jenny Konakci in the Zhao lab finished her summer research as a scholar in the Harvey A. Friedman Center Summer Research Program in Aging and Neurological Diseases under the mentorship of Dr. Huma Naz. She presented at the Summer Research Program in Aging and Neurological Diseases poster Symposium.

Dr. Yang Li received a Career Development Award from the Rally Foundation and a New Investigator Grant from ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation
Dr. Susan Dutcher received an award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to study "Regulation of Motile Cilia Assembly in Lung Disease" and an award from National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to study "Genetic Analysis of Centrioles and Cilia"
Dr. Mike White and Dr. Joseph Corbo were awarded a two-year McDonnell Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology grant to design cell type-specific synthetic enhancers in the mouse brain using generative AI. The grant will fund a pilot effort to develop an AI-driven synthetic biology strategy to target optogenetics and CRISPR-Cas9 reagents to specific cell types in the brain.

“A survey of hypothalamic phenotypes identifies molecular and behavioral consequences of MYT1L haploinsufficiency in male and female mice” in Hormones and Behavior, Dougherty lab

"Autoregulation of RPL7B by inhibition of a structural splicing enhancer" in Nucleic Acids Research, White and Stormo lab

"CNPI: Rapid Analyses of Human Copy Number Data" in Journal of Molecular Biology, Turner lab, Check out the CNPI toolkit powering this work: https://github.com/TNTurnerLab/CNPI.

"A statistical framework for multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies" in Nature Computational Science, Dutcher lab as part of the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium

"Whole genome sequence analysis of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol across 246 K individuals." in Genome Biology, Dutcher lab

“The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues Network” in Nature, Wang lab and MGI as leaders of the Organizational Center and one of the file Genome Characterization Centers

"Non-canonical functions of DNMT3A in hematopoietic stem cells regulate telomerase activity and genome integrity" in Cell Stem Cell, Wang lab

"Microglia replacement: from monocytic origin to therapy" in Trends in Immunology, Jingyi Yang in the Tristan Li lab

"REV-ERBα regulates brain NAD+ levels and tauopathy via an astrocyte-specific NFIL3-CD38 axis" accepted for publication in Nature Aging, Zhao lab

"Loss of dihydroceramide desaturase drives neurodegeneration by disrupting endoplasmic reticulum and lipid droplet homeostasis in glial cells" in eLife, Skeath lab

Preprint: "SMURF Reconstructs Single-Cells from Visium HD Data to Reveal Zonation of Transcriptional Programs in the Intestine", Juanru Guo in the Mitra lab

Now you can see previous newsletters under the Community Life tab on our website genetics.wustl.edu.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

WashU Medicine
4515 McKinley Ave
St. Louis, MO 63130

Manage your preferences | Unsubscribe
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.

Subscribe to our email list.

Newsletter

Postdoctoral researcher Wesley Saintilnord named a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

$12 million grant funds studies of role of genes in autism, similar diagnoses

Jennifer Phillips-Cremins has been named a BJC Investigator in the departments of Genetics and of Neuroscience

Student and Postdoc Awards

Grants

Publications