While in Shinya Yamanaka's lab I published an important paper with Kazu Takahashi and was a co-author on 4 other papers. The recent paper with Kazu describes how c-Myc facilitates induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming. A clear description of how c-Myc enhances reprogramming has eluded the field since 2006, when reprogramming was first described. There are several important discoveries in our paper. The first is the detection of a proliferative pause that occurs early in reprogramming (by d3), which is a common response with all somatic cell lines tested. The second discovery are two means by which cells can escape this pause. The first is c-Myc, the second is Lin41. Lin41 actually allows cells to subvert the onset of the pause, while c-Myc allows cells to escape the pause after it begins. c-Myc-dependent escape is dependent on Lin41, so Lin41 and Myc are actually involved in the same important process during reprogramming. Finally, we discovered that Teratoma fibroblasts are inherently incapable of benefiting from either Lin41 or c-Myc. Teratoma fibroblasts have already inactivated the reprogramming-induced senescence pathway. This may shed light on how teratomas arise. Techniques: Cellular reprogramming with retrovirus, episomal vectors and mRNA; hES and mES stem cell culture and differentiation protocols including endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm lineages; teratoma assay formation; embryoid body differentiation; mouse surgery; PCR; Western blot; cloning and various molecular biology techniques; primary cell culturing; cell based assay development; immunohistochemistry; immunofluorescence; RNA-sequencing; RIP-sequencing; single cell sequencing with 10X; illumina sequencing; smrt-bell sequencing; FACS sorting; protein mass spec; SILAC mass spec; data analysis with R, Unix, Matlab, Ruby, and FIJI. Other: Management of small scientific groups resulting in publications, record keeping, lab organization, effective/time efficient journal clubs.

Archaris Inc. was founded by Sasha Kamb. The company was a Salt Lake City-based biotechnology startup focused on accelerating drug discovery through target discovery and validation using a peptide library-based screening platform. Our team, lead by Bob Sandrock, used a clever screening strategy to identify death-inducing cDNAs and identified t-Bid as a potent cell death inducing protein. From this discovery I became aware of Xiaodong Wang's lab at UTSW, whose lab I later joined at UTSW. Techniques: Assay Design, Cell Culture, PCR, Molecular Biology, Cell transfection and infection using retrovirus, FACS.