2024 August
Aubrey Reitzel receives a travel award to attend the SOT conference in Spring 2025!
The $1,500 award will help Aubrey attend the annual Society of Toxicology (SOT) meeting in Orlando in March 2025, where she will present her honors thesis project on the impact of circadian temporal misalignment on behavior, metabolism, and aging in Drosophila. Congratulations!
Many thanks to Krish Patel for co-leading the project during the summer of 2024, as well as to Bre Beard, a PhD candidate in our lab, for mentoring them on the project. We also thank the KEEP summer program (Directors: Drs. Rachel Neal and Cindy Corbitt) for providing Aubrey with this exciting opportunity!
2024 July
Hwangbo lab presents six posters at the undergraduate research conference!
Students from the Hwanbo lab are presenting six posters at the annual Undergraduate Summer Research Conference hosted by the University of Louisville.
Dunklin Rangitsch and Adil Ramazanov were supported by the CARE program, Aubrey Reitzel and Krish Patel were supported by the KEEP program, Emmanuel Becerra (Lamar University, Tx) was supported by Cardiovascular (CV)-SROP, and Dawson Sheble (Eastern Kentucky University) was supported by the KY INBRE Summer Program. It was a busy and hot summer! Special thanks to their graduate mentors: Bre and Mubaraq!
2024 June
Bre Beard's work on Con-DAM is published!
Congratulations Bre on her new paper (with Abigail and Lucas) published in microPublication! It is another short but sweet study (after Mubaraq's Con-FLIC) from the lab to develop a new tool to measure sleep behaviors and food intake simultaneously in flies at a single-fly resolution!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39005561/
Using Con-FLIC and Con-DAM, we plan to explore the behavioral, genetic, and neuronal mechanisms of the sleep-feeding conflict!
2024 May
Three lab members graduate !
Congratulations! Our long-term undergraduate members, Abigail Bohn, Lucas Fitzgerald and Sarayu Alli are graduating ! At the Honors Convocation, Lucas was awarded the best honors thesis in the natural sciences division. Sarayu is heading to the Ohio State University for PhD training, while Abigail is starting medical school at the University of Louisville. Lucas will be taking a gap year working as a research technician at the medical center before starting graduate school. We wish you all the best !
2024 April
Bre and Lucas win awards at the Biology Awards Ceremony !
Congratulations to Bre Beard and Lucas Fitzerald on receiving awards at the Biology Awards Day 2024!
Bre Beard: Graduate Student Service Award (for graduate students who have demonstrated exceptional service)
Lucas Fitzgerald: The Smith Award (for undergraduate students whose research and drive in the field of Molecular Cellular Developmental Biology are exceptional)
2024 April
Dae-Sung's contributed work is published in PloS Computational Biology!
Dae-Sung's collaborative work with Drs. Braun, Kath, and Allada labs at Northwestern University, on how temperature impacts the circadian transcriptome in the flies' fat body, has been published in PLOS Computational Biology !
2024 April
Lucas Fitzgerald receives the Best Undergraduate Thesis award in the Natural Sciences division !
Congratulations Lucas !
Thesis title: The Anti-Diabetic Drug Metformin Disrupts Feeding and Sleeping Behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster
We are excited about his discovery about metformin's unexpected side effects! Because metformin is the most widely prescribed medication for people with type II diabetes, his discovery will have a meaningful impact on basic and clinical research. We appreciate Mubaraq and Bre for their mentoring over his project. We also thank Heba Kourahbi (class of 2022) and Erica Hassoun (class of 2022) who initiated the work. We are looking for students who can continue the work (.. seriously) !
2024 April
Eileen Sember's honors thesis work on Werner Syndrome is published !
Congratulations to Eileen Sember (with Ranga, Bre, Mubaraq) on their new paper in G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics !
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38491858/
We wish Eileen all the best for her PhD training at Wisconsin!
We are now looking for a new PhD student who can lead the project to delve into the mechanisms (genomic, metabolomic molecular, biochemical) for the observation reported in the paper !
2024 March
John Huynh wins second place at the Annual Kentucky Science & Engineering Fair (KYSEF) !
John Huynh, our youngest high school research intern,
won second place in the biochemistry category at the Annual KYSEF, held at Eastern Kentucky University.
Since the summer of 2023, John, mentored by Lucas Fitzgerald (senior) and Bre Beard (PhD candidate), has been diligently working on potential links between synthetic food dyes and hyperactivity and sleep problems. Good job and we wish him all the best!
2024 February
Mubaraq Opoola's work on Con-FLIC is published!
Congratulations Mubaraq and Lucas on their new paper published in microPublication! It is a short but sweet study to develop a new tool to measure feeding behaviors and food intake simultaneously in flies at a single-fly resolution!
Opoola, M; Fitzgerald, L; Hwangbo, DS (2024). Con-FLIC: concurrent measurement of feeding behaviors and food consumption in Drosophila at single-fly resolution. microPublication Biology.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38487478/
Now, it is Bre’s (with Abigail) turn for their manuscript on Con-DAM!
2023 December
Congratulations to Rachel Curtis on her MS degree and to Bre Beard on her PhD candidacy!
Rachel Curtis has completed all the requirements for her MS degree, and Bre Beard successfully defended her comprehensive qualifying exams, becoming a PhD candidate. Congratulations!
Rachel will be teaching at Indiana University Southeast as a visiting instructor while preparing for her PhD program. Bre is excited about being able to devote more of her time to research!
2023 November
Hwangbo lab presents posters at KAS meeting !
Bre Beard (PhD program) and Rachel Curtis (MS program) are presenting posters at the Kentucky Academy of Science annual meeting at Northern Kentucky University, Nov 3-4.
Titles:
"Regulation of Behavior and Physiology by the Peripheral Fat Body Clock in Drosophila"
"Establishment of a Novel Feeding-Based Assay for Measuring Neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster"
2023 October
Dae-Sung's contributed work posted on bioRxiv !
Dae-Sung's collaborative work with Drs. Braun, Kath, and Allada labs at Northwestern University, on how temperature impacts the circadian transcriptome in the flies' fat body, has been posted on bioRxiv.
2023 September
Eileen's manuscript posted on bioRxiv !
We will soon submit our work to an appropriate journal for publication and look forward to welcoming a new member to continue the project.
2023 September
Dae-Sung gives a talk at Murray State Univ.!
Dr. Alexey Arkov has invited Dae-Sung to present a seminar at the Department of Biological Sciences at Murray State University. We will collaborate with his lab to investigate the potential roles of tudor in behavioral homeostasis and aging.
2023 August
Hwangbo lab presents five posters at the undergraduate research conference!
Students from the Hwanbo lab are presenting five posters at the annual Undergraduate Summer Research Conference hosted by the University of Louisville.
Abigail and Sarayu were supported by Mentored Research Funds, Lucas was supported by SROP, Aubrey was supported by the CARE program, and Bia (Northern Kentucky University) was supported by the KY INBRE Summer Program. Special thanks to their graduate mentors: Mubaraq, Bre, and Rachel!
2023 July
Dae-Sung's manuscript published in eLife !
Dae-Sung's work with his postdoctoral advisor, Dr. Ravi Allada at Northwestern University, has been published in eLife. Coauthors from the lab include Sarayu Alli, Nicholas Wright, and Ladan Abbasi.
2023 May
Lucas receives an SROP award!
Lucas was awarded the Summer Research Opportunity Award for his proposal to investigate the potential impacts of the antidiabetic drug metformin on sleeping and feeding behavior in Drosophila. The award will cover his expenses for his 10-week summer research!
2023 May
Three lab members graduate !
Congratulations! Our long-term undergraduate members, Nicholas Wright, Eileen Sember and Drew Preston are graduating ! At the Honors Convocation, Eileen was awarded the best honors thesis in the natural sciences division. Eileen is heading to the University of Wisconsin for PhD training, while Drew is starting dental school at the University of Louisville. Nick will be taking a gap year before starting medical school. We wish you all the best !
2023 April
Dae-Sung gives a talk at Western Kentucky Univ.!
Dr. Ajay Srivastava has invited Dae-Sung to present a seminar at the Department of Biology at Western Kentucky State University. We will collaborate with his lab to investigate the roles of dCAF12 in tissue homeostasis in Drosophila!
2023 April
Eileen presents a poster !
Eileen is presenting a poster on her thesis work at the University of Louisville's Annual Undergraduate Research Showcase. We are currently looking for new members who are interested in taking over the project after Eileen's graduation.
Poster title: 'Dietary Restriction Fails to Extend Lifespan of Drosophila Model of Werner Syndrome.'
2023 April
Dae-Sung's contributed work posted on arXiv !
Zhao et al., Dae-Sung's collaborative work with Drs. Rosemary Braun, William Kath, and Allada labs at Northwestern University, on how short-term temperature fluctuations impact the circadian transcriptome in the Drosophila fat body, has been posted on arXiv. This work will be submitted to an appropriate journal soon!
2023 March
Eileen and Drew defend their honors theses!
Good job Eillen and Drew!
Eileen's thesis title: Impacts of Dietary Restriction on a Drosophila Model of Werner Syndrome
Drew's thesis title: Evolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Virulence Using Drosophila melanogaster as a Model Organism
2023 March
Mubaraq presents a poster at the fly meeting !
Mubaraq is presenting a poster at the annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago! This conference is the largest of its kind, where researchers using flies as model organisms gather from around the world. His travel to Chicago was partly supported by the Biology Department Travel Award (thank you!).
Poster title: 'Genetic Variation in Dietary Sugar Consumption in Drosophila.'
2023 Feb
Hwangbo lab receives an R15 grant from NIH!
Now it is official and final ! The lab has received an R15 grant
(Feb 2023 – Jan 2026; $445,390) from the National Institute on Aging for its proposal, “Genetic Mechanisms of Circadian Clock-Mediated Dietary Restriction in Drosophila”
We are currently recruiting undergraduates for volunteering/course credit, which may be transitioned to paid positions! Contact Dae-Sung at ds.hwangbo@louisville.edu for details!
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