Christine received her B.A. in Biochemistry from Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City. She did her Ph.D. thesis work in the laboratory of William G. Scott in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz studying the structure and function of RNA enzymes. She was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in Venki Ramakrishnan’s laboratory at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England where she studied bacterial translation. Her work in Venki’s lab focused on how the ribosome performs translocation or movement of the tRNA-mRNA helix through the ribosome during protein synthesis. She also determined structures of extended tRNAs bound to the ribosome that cause mRNA frameshifts to understand how RNA-mediated structures promote ribosomal errors.

Her laboratory will continue to work on understanding how proteins and/or RNA molecules influence ribosome activity. In addition, new research will focus on deciphering how complex mRNA structures influence specific protein binding for both processing and transport.

Jack Dunkle, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
jdunkle@emory.edu

Jack received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and then a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley.  His research interests are in RNA structural biology, mechanistically understanding the translation of the genetic code, and the role of proteins synthesis in health and disease.  Jack joined the Dunham Lab as a post-doctoral fellow in January of 2011.

Tatsuya Maehigashi, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
t.maehigashi@emory.edu

Tatsuya ("T") received his B.S. in Chemistry from Utah State University where he worked in Dr. Joseph Li's laboratory. His Ph.D. thesis was in Loren Williams group at Georgia Institute of Technology in the Chemistry Dept on the high resolution crystal structures of DNA decamers in the presence of biologically relevant monovalent cations. In addition to his collaboration with Dr Nick Hud's group, Tatsuya solved structures of DNA bound to intercalating drugs.

Crystal Fagan
Graduate Student
cefagan@emory.edu

Crys received her B.S. in Biochemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Her undergraduate research on cystein protease inhibitors with Dr. James Powers sparked her intrigue with protein structure.  She is currently working toward her PhD at Emory in the Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology department.  She is entering the field of structural biology to study proteins involved in mRNA localization and tRNA-mediated ribosome frameshifting.

Stacey Miles
Research Specialist
sjeffri@emory.edu


Stacey graduated from University of Florida with a Master’s degree in Biology.  Her thesis work was in Dr. David Oppenhimer's lab studying gene products involved in cell shape determination in Arabidopsis thaliana.  Since graduating, Stacey worked in Professor June Scott’s lab at Emory exploring the possibility of using Streptococcus pyogenes pilli as vaccine vectors. She is currently a member of the Dunham Lab where she is optimizing ribosome isolation from different organisms.