news — Mustoe Lab

11/2023 — Caleb did an excellent job presenting his work at this years FASEB meeting! Stay tuned next year for more updates from all of us here at the Mustoe lab.

12/2023 — The lab celebrates the holidays with door decoration and the THINC holiday party. Our lab took home first prize for our Krampus-themed door decorations!

11/2023 — This Thanksgiving we all got together to feast on a lab potluck before everyone goes their separate ways for the real day. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

11/2023 — Look at all these brilliant young scientists showing their work at the 33rd annual KECK research conference. Great job to everyone for getting out there and sharing our amazing research.

10/2023 — We get in the Halloween spirit and flex our carving skills at the THINC pumpkin carving contest. Our pumpkin Rick secured 2nd place in the competition (but we think we clearly should have been first).

10/2023 — For term 2 rotation, the Mustoe lab has a double feature. We are excited to mentor new students Steven Nguyen and Siddhartha Shandilya. Welcome aboard!

8/2023 — We’d like to welcome Michael Lee, a new BCM graduate student who will be joining us for term 1 rotation.

7/2023 — We have the pleasure of hosting JT Phillips as part of the SMS summer scholar program. JT will be getting a jump start on his Biomedical Engineering career with us before heading off for his first semester at UNC Chapel Hill. Great to have you JT!

6/2023 — Congratulations to David, Jenn, and Irfana for the acceptance of their paper “Mutation signature filtering enables high-fidelity RNA structure probing at all four nucleobases with DMS”! Be on the lookout for the release of their amazing work in an upcoming issue of Nucleic Acids Research or view the pre-print available on BioRxiv now (link).

5/2023 — The Mustoe lab grows!

Our research group is expanding with the addition of several talented young scientists. We would like to welcome our two new graduate students: Caleb Rosenblad and Rebekah Rothacher; and a new postdoctoral associate: Joshua Meehan. Together, they will contribute to an already amazing team of RNA biologists in uncovering the mysteries of RNA structural dynamics. To celebrate we took a trip to Aga’s for some amazing Indian cuisine!

1/2023 — Huge congratulations are in order for our Staff Scientist Irfana Saleem! She was selected to give a talk at this year’s Protein-RNA Interactions Keystone conference in Vancouver, BC Canada. Along with this, she was awarded with the National Cancer Institute Scholarship. Excellent work Irfana!

01/2023 - The Mustoe lab turns 3! To celebrate, we head out to Cidercade for drinks and some friendly (but very serious) competition.

12/2022

It’s that time of year again! The Mustoe lab gets in the holiday spirit with a north pole-themed door decoration as part of the THINC door decoration competition. Happy holidays from all of us at BCM!

10/2022 — This year for the annual THINC retreat the lab turns despicable. Be on the lookout for some great upcoming work from all of Tony’s favorite minions.

8/2022 — Lab awarded NIH NIGMS R35 grant!

This grant will provide $1.25M in funding over 5 years to support our research on improving chemical probing technologies and defining the role of structural dynamics in RNA function. To celebrate, we had a Mexican feast at a lab favorite - Cuchara.

8/2022 — Welcome to Rebekah, an incoming CPSB student, who will be rotating with us in Term 1

6/2022 — Lab awarded Beckman Young Investigator Award

The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation named our lab as one of 10 BYI awardees. This prestigious award provides $600,000 in funding over 4 years and will enable to us to develop some very exciting new technologies for studying RNA structure and its impact on development. Read more

6/2022 — Welcome to Basim, an undergraduate through the SMART Scholar program, who is joining us for the summer from Michigan State University

6/2022 — A fantastic RNA Society Meeting in the books!

Khoa, Ritwika, and David presented outstanding (and very-well attended) posters, and Tony gave a talk. We all enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones, learning about the exciting new discoveries taking place in the RNA world, and getting some mountain air in Boulder, CO

5/2022 — Tony gives a talk at the Department of Genetics retreat in Galveston

4/2022 — Another birthday in the books (this time Tony’s)

3/2022 — Congrats to Khoa for winning a travel award to RNA Society 2022! Boulder here we come

**1/2022 — Our lab turns 2!**
We celebrated with some mini-golf downtown on Discovery Green. Not sure if Thomas won, but we let him claim first on the podium anyways. I took one for the team by trying (unsuccessfully) for the wild hole-in-ones. That’s what happens when you leave the bench — you forget those shots rarely go in, but you still have to try!

**12/2021 —** Who knew the lab had such outstanding decorating skills?!? It was no contest — we were the runaway winners of the THINC decorating contest (no thanks to me).

12/2021 — Congrats to Ritwika for receiving the CPSB Outstanding TA award!

10/2021 — Welcome to rotation students Trevor and Justin (CPSB program)

8/2021 — Welcome to rotation student Andrew (QCB program)

8/2021 — Welcome to Thomas, our new technician and recent grad from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

6/2021 — Welcome to Lauren, a summer undergrad joining us from Washington University in St. Louis

4/2021 — Welcome to our second postdoc David Mitchell! David brings a wealth of expertise in RNA, having developed exciting new probing reagents in Phil Bevilacqua’s group, and uncovering novel folding mechanisms in Rick Russell’s group. Excited to see what’s next!

3/2021 — Congrats to Ritwika and Khoa for passing their qualifying exams. Very well deserved! I predict great things…

3/2021 — Welcome to our first postdoc Irfana Saleem, who is joining us from the Band lab at University of Nebraska where she did excellent work elucidating a novel RNA binding protein. We are lucky to add her expertise to our group!

1/2021 — Welcome to Justin (QCB rotation student)

11/2020 — Congrats to Ritwika and Khoa on giving stellar first thesis advisory committee meetings! Lots of great feedback and ideas spurred by their work. In addition to mastering his project, Khoa has become an expert in Houston Banh Mi’s, which we celebrated with afterwards (but I forgot to take a photo).

9/2020 — Welcome to rotation students Brian (CPSB program) and Maddie (CCB program)

**5/2020 — Welcome to Ritwika and Khoa, the lab’s first graduate students!**
Sadly we had to celebrate over Zoom, but hopefully we can have a proper party soon! Stay tuned for what are going to be some really cool discoveries!

**4/2020 — Congrats to Hashim Al-Hashimi on the NAS Award in Molecular Biology!**
Was a ton of fun celebrating with old friends Hashim’s and the labs fantastic accomplishments over the years!

1/2020 — Welcome to Jenn Cotter, the lab’s first official member!
We are so excited to have such a great scientist join us as we build the lab and get our first experiments started!