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Current Lab Members
Christina Burch
Christina obtained undergraduate degrees in Biology and Mathematics at the University of Maryland in 1995. She finished her graduate work at the University of California in San Diego, where she studied the genetics of adaptation in an RNA virus. She spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and the University of Idaho before joining the faculty at UNC. Christina's primary research focus is the genetics of adaptation, but her interests include the evolution of phenotypes with particular relevance to viruses, such as virulence and host range.
Sarah Joseph
Sarah joined us from the University of Texas where she worked with Mark Kirkpatrick, using evolution experiments to examine the effects of mutations in haploid and diploid yeast. She is currently an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow investigating the causes and consequences of superinfection in the bacteriophage Φ6.
Kristen Dang
Kristen graduated from the University of Utah with a B.S. in communication and a minor in chemistry. During her time there, she worked in the lab of Bob Weiss and helped sequence the genome of Pyrococcus furiosus. Kristen is a participant in UNC's Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program. Her research interests include computational studies of gene networks, robustness and HIV evolution.
Katie Supler
Katie is a senior Biology and Environmental Studies major at UNC. She began working with the bacteriophage G4 (and Jen Knies) in the summer of 2005 on two projects: 1) examining the genetics of adaptation to different thermal environments and 2) investigating whether adaptive mutations identified in lab experiments also underlie variation in performance in natural phage populations. To better understand the genetics of adaptation to different thermal regimes, Katie helped adapt three G4 populations to two constant thermal regimes and one fluctuating thermal regime. For the second project, Katie has been measuring the performance of wild G4-like phage across a range of temperatures to determine if mutations adaptive to high temperature in the lab also underlie variation in thermal performance in natural populations.
Kue Vang
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Cassandra Jabara
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Lab Alumni
Sébastien Guyader (Postdoc 2004-2006)
Sébastien's research in our lab centered around the evolution of life history traits (e.g. growth rate, transmission, virulence) in pathogens. He is interested in the consquences of such evolution for pathogen epidemiology, and has moved on to the French Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) to pursue related questions in an applied agricultural setting.
Jennifer Knies (Graduate Student 2002-2007)
Jen's work in our lab focused primarily on the genetic basis of temperature adaptation. She demonstrated that adaptation to higher temperatures in bacteriophage conferred two advantages - higher maximal growth rates and broader thermal ranges. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, working with Dan Weinreich on the biochemical basis of temperature adaptation in individual enzymes.
Siobain Duffy (visiting Graduate Student 2004-2006)
Siobain is interested in emerging RNA viruses, and using evolutionary ecology to inform public health. As a graduate student, Siobain used evolution experiments to study the adaptation of an RNA bacteriophage to novel host environments. Siobain is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State, working with Eddie Holmes.
Martin Ferris (Graduate Student 2002-2007)
Marty hopes to apply the evolutionary toolkit he developed in graduate school to the study of emerging viral disease. Marty's graduate research investigated the genetic basis of host range evolution in an RNA bacteriophage. He has moved on to a postdoc in the UNC medical school with Mark Heise. There he will be investigating natural variation among alphaviruses, mosquito borne RNA viruses that are a significant cause of encephalitis and infectious arthritis in humans.
Graduated Undergraduates
Christopher Todd graduated from UNC with a double major in Biology and Peace, War and Defense. In our lab, Chris investigated the bacterial host range of the bacteriophage Φ6. After he graduated in 2006, Chris took a job as a research technician in a clinical science lab at Dook.
Stephanie Teeter graduated from UNC in 2006 with a Biology major and a Spanish minor. She investigated the nature of epistasis and genotype by environment interactions in the Φ6 genome.
Monica Meng graduated from UNC in 2005 with degrees in biology and Chinese. She completed the work for her honor's thesis, Triclosan resistance in E. coli and its relationship to antibiotic cross-resistance, in the Burch Lab. Monica is now a dental student at UNC.
Alisha Frank graduated from the UNC Exercise and Sports Science Department in 2004. She is now in medical school here at UNC.
Alden Casati graduated from the Biology Department in 2004. As an undergraduate in our lab, Alden examined the consequences of co-infection (infection of a single host cell by more than one virus) in the Burch lab. Alden is now studying to become a physician's assistant.