Newsletter 2024
Click on the image to see the picture gallery with captions.
Over the summer three of our NIH-funded T32 fellows were able to study abroad for their capstone project. Grace Vick, a PhD student in Vasant Muralidharan‘s lab, spent 6 weeks at the Institut Pasteur Cambodia where she worked with Dennis Kyle’s collaborators. Victoria “Tori” Mendiola, a PhD student in Dennis Kyle‘s lab, and Melissa Sleda, a PhD student in Silvia Moreno‘s lab, served as teaching assistants for the study away program in India organized by assistant professor Sam Kurup.
Please consider making a financial gift to the CTEGD Fund or the Daniel G. Colley Training in Parasitology Fund to provide future field experiences to our trainees.
Trainee Spotlights
Corey Rennolds is a postdoctoral researcher in Tania Rozario’s laboratory. Learn more about Corey.
Grace Vick is an infectious diseases PhD candidate in Vasant Muralidharan’s laboratory. Learn more about Grace.
Kaelynn Parker is a cellular biology PhD student in Diego Huet‘s laboratory. Learn more about Kaelynn.
Assistant Professor Tania Rozario received a seed grant from the Hypothesis Fund to develop a new approach to advance tapeworm research, particularly on the little understood topic of regeneration. Read the full story.
Click play to listen to an excerpt of Vasant Muralidharan discussing the cellular mechanics of malaria infection.
Vasant Muralidharan and his research group at the University of Georgia’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases have uncovered the role of an essential protein in Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria. The discovery offers new insights for vaccine and drug development. Read the full story.
Diego Huet, assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy and the Center for Tropical & Emerging Global Diseases, studies parasites that cause disease in both humans and animals. His lab has ramped up a project to better understand the biology of Toxoplasma gondii, an organism carried by cats that is related to the parasite that causes malaria. Read the full story.
Graduate student Baihetiya “Barna” Baierna (left) and postdoctoral fellow Mayara Bertolini (right) received fellowships from the American Heart Association, supporting their research and education. Read the full story.
In the news…
Michael Strand is a Regents Professor in the Department of Entomology and member of the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. His mosquito research was featured in a number of news stories.
What drives mosquitoes’ bloodlust? Their hormones (Nature)
The Science Behind What Makes Mosquitoes Bite You! Explained (News 9)
Mosquito bloodlust controlled by two hormones (The Naked Scientists)
Dennis Kyle is the Director of CTEGD and the GRA Eminent Scholar in Antiparasitic Drug Discovery in the Departments of Cellular Biology and Infectious Diseases. He was quoted in a story about the “brain-eating amoeba” Naegleria fowleri.
Brain-eating amoeba: Will the warming climate bring more cases? (MSN)
Faculty Honors
Jessica Kissinger and Dennis Kyle received the Lamar Dodd Creative Research Award during UGA’s Honors Week this spring and were honored during the Georgia/Georgia Tech football game. The award recognizes established investigators whose overall scholarly body of work has had a major impact on the field of study and has established the investigator’s international reputation as a leader in the field. Read more.
Stephen Hajduk received a Georgia Research Alliance award to support the advancement of proof-of-concept animal studies in the development of their innovative therapeutic against Multiple Myeloma.
The “People, Parasites, and Plagues” podcast that David Peterson co-hosts with Kim Klonowski of Department of Cellular Biology kicked off its third season this fall. Read more about the new season.
New episodes of “People, Parasites and Plagues” can be found every other Friday on all major podcast providers including Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Music. And be sure to follow them on Instagram (@PPPpodcastUGA) to get a behind the scenes look at upcoming shows.
Listen below to recent episodes featuring CTEGD members Tania Rozario, Sam Kurup, Rick Tarleton, Vasant Muralidharan, and Anthony Ruberto
Alumni Spotlight
Nathan Chasen, who completed his Ph.D. in December 2017 under the mentorship of Silvia Moreno, has combined his scientific knowledge with the creative arts to create metal cast sculptures of parasites. Read more about his art.
Lilach Sheiner, who did her post-doctoral training in Boris Striepen’s laboratory, was featured in a couple of videos this year. The University of Glasgow’s College of Medical, Veterinary, and Life Sciences, where Sheiner is now a professor, featured her in their YouTube video. In a That’s TV Scotland X (Twitter) video she discusses her work on Toxoplasma and how it could lead to new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Explore more
Congratulations, graduates!
Madelaine Usey (Huet lab) is now a Laboratory Leadership Service Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Rui Xiao (Kissinger lab) is now a bioinformatician at the University of Pennsylvania VetMed
Elyssa Campbell (Moorhead lab) has been named co-director of the Filariasis Research Reagent Resource Center (FR3)
Leonor Sicalo Gianechini (Moorhead lab) is now a postdoctoral associate in the Moorhead lab
Melissa Sleda (Moreno lab) is now a postdoctoral associate in the Moreno lab
Recently Funded Projects
Ashutosh Pathak, in a joint project with Emory University, has received NIH funding to study the clinical and immunological consequences of natural routes of infection in a murine model of tuberculosis-malaria co-infections.
Silvia Moreno was awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grant for a training programs workshop for trainees in parasitology which was held in May with with two other universities that have NIH-funded T32 fellowship programs.
Chet Joyner, in collaboration with Emory University, received an NIH grant to look at the molecular mechanisms of human long-lived plasma cell generation in the bone marrow and spleen. He also received a grant from the U.S. Department of Army for Plasmodium mosquito studies. Chet received an NIH grant to study the comparative transcriptomic of Plasmodium vivax strains to understand hypnozoite formation. Additionally, he was recently awarded a grant from MRIGlobal for the production of Plasmodium isolates.
Emily Bremers, a PhD student in Belen Cassera’s lab, received an NIH grant to understand Plasmodium falciparum‘s multidrug resistance protein through the characterization of a novel antimalarial class.
Dennis Kyle received funding from Amazing Avens Quest for Amoeba Awareness to discover host genetic factors associated with susceptibility to infections with brain-eating amoebae.
Jessica Kissinger received NIH funding to study gene regulation in Cryptosporidium. She also received funds from the University of Pennsylvania for Sustainable FAIR Access to Omic-scale Datasets for Eukaryotic Pathogens, Advancing Discovery Research.
Andrew Moorhead received an NIH grant for pre-clinical models of infectious diseases.
Anthony Ruberto, a post-doctoral associate in Dennis Kyle’s lab, received an NIH grant for State of the ART: functional genomic of RNA-binding proteins and their role in artemisinin drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum.
Vasant Muralidharan received funding from NIH to study protein glycosylation and trafficking in Plasmodium falciparum.
Ynes Ortega received an award from the Carter Center for the confirmation of Guinea Worm species in alcohol-fixed samples.
Rick Tarleton received a grant from NIH for treatment outcome requirements for disease prevention in Chagas disease.
