Jeff Milbrandt, MD, PhD, the James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics and executive director of the McDonnell Genome Institute, and Aaron DiAntonio, MD, PhD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Developmental Biology, received the Dean’s Medal for Innovation and Commercialization for their high-caliber scientific research and commercialization achievements.
Graduate student Kia Barclay of the Li Lab has been selected as a Graduate Student Recipient of the 2025 Provost’s Research Excellence Award, a prestigious university-wide honor recognizing outstanding research achievement. Barclay is one of only seven students across both the Danforth and Medical campuses to receive the award this year—and the sole honoree representing the School of Medicine, underscoring the exceptional impact of her scientific contributions.
The Long Life Family Study project, led by Michael Province, PhD, was recently renewed by the National Institute on Aging for $80 Million dollars over 5 years (2U19AG063893-06), to perform sequencing effort as well as recruit new families. PacBio and LLFS expect to begin sequencing in Q4 2025 at the McDonnell Genome Institute at WashU Medicine, with an initial tranche of ~5,500 samples, and the full ~7,800- sample program spanning five years.
Meers and his team are developing a novel time-lapse profiling method to monitor changes in how a cell’s genes are regulated as it goes through the reprogramming process. A better understanding of these changes could lead to the development of more precise and efficient cell conversion methods that are more suitable for human therapeutics.
The newly launched Department of Genetics fellow-to-faculty program aims to prepare fellows not just as scientists but as future leaders. The first recruit, Macias-Velasco, earned his PhD at WashU in computational and systems biology, a field that uses sophisticated statistical approaches to understand human genetics and the development of disease.
The Department of Genetics recently hosted the 2nd Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Lecture, featuring keynote speaker Timothy Hughes, PhD, who presented his talk, “Codebook: sequence specificity of human transcription factors.” As part of the event, the department proudly announced this year’s Stormo Fellowship in Computational and Systems Biology recipient: Jennie Yao, a PhD student in the labs of Dr. Obi Griffith and Dr. Malachi Griffith.
Graduate student Emma Casey of the Jin lab has been appointed to the Cellular and Molecular Biology (CMB) T32 Training Grant, a competitive program funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Below we are going to delve into Anjali Yadav’s background, hobbies and research aspirations. What are you investigating? In our lab, we study how metabolism affects epigenetic regulation of gene expression in the brain, particularly in the context of substance use disorders, development, and neurodegeneration. My project specifically focuses on understanding how alcohol-derived acetate influences […]
WashU Medicine postdoctoral researchers Wesley Saintilnord, PhD, in the Department of Genetics (left) and Matthew Reynolds, PhD, in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics (right) have been named Jane Coffin Childs Fellows. 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.