Barbara Mellone, Ph.D. | She/Her
I am a Professor in the Genetics and Genomics Program of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. Before UConn, I was a postdoctoral fellow with Gary Karpen at the LBNL and UC Berkeley. I did my PhD at the Medical Research Council, Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the laboratory of Robin Allshire. I developed a passion for chromosomes when I was an undergraduate at the University of Milan, Italy. Barbara.Mellone [at] uconn.edu |
Tyler McDermott
PhD student Tyler received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Pace University and his M.S. in Biomedical Forensic Sciences from Boston University. He joined the lab in 2020 and is investigating the functional relationship between retroelements and centromeric proteins. Tyler.McDermott [at] uconn.edu |
Asna Amjad
PhD student Asna received her BS in Bioinformatics from the Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan and her MS in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at University of Texas at Dallas. She joined the lab in 2021 and her project uses chromatin profiling and and PRO-seq data to study de novo centromere formation and centromeric transcripts. Asna.Amjad [at] uconn.edu |
Ruiyi Sun
PhD student Ruiyi received her BS in Biology from the University of Michigan and a MS in Biology from NYU. Her interest in centromere biology sparked while studying S. pombe centromeres in Fei Li's lab at NYU. She joined the lab in 2022 and is interested in centromere specification and centromere drive. Ruiyi.Sun [at] uconn.edu |
Venkata Patchigolla
Undergraduate Assistant (Beckman Scholar) Venkata is a senior in molecular and cell biology. He joined the lab in the fall of 2019 and is establishing a new system to test the inheritance of de novo centromeres during fly development. He is also using computational approaches to determine if non-B DNA is enriched at centromeres. Venkata.Patchigolla [at] uconn.edu |
Sarah Bolarinwa
NSF REU Student Sarah is a rising sophomore in Biology at Howard University. She is working in the lab as part of an NSF REU program with the PNB department at UConn. Sarah will be learning how to make and stain chromatin and DNA fibers from Drosophila and Sciara to unveil the organization of repetitive sequences at the centromere and in rDNA. |