Presentations
Our lab members present their research at national and regional meetings, and at an annual student symposium hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences at Ashland University. You can find us in action on this page. Lab publications and grant funding are highlighted further down.
Research Funding
Our research on zebrafish lens crystallin function has been funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health using their AREA grant funding for undergraduate focused research. We have received over $400,000 in funding from the NEI since 2001.
Publications
Click on each of the publications to find an online full-text or PDF version. You can also view our citations on my Google Scholar and ResearchGate pages.
Experimental Eye Research 2013
Our first publication using morpholinos to stop production of lens protein. We show that alpha A-crystallin is not needed for development of a normal, transparent lens.
Molecular Vision 2013
A description of how zebrafish lens protein content changes from 4.5 days after fertilization to 27 months. We show that zebrafish contain less alpha crystallin than mammals and that some crystallins may play developmental stage-specific roles.
Journal of Chemical Ecology 2013
In this collaboration with some of our chemistry colleagues we help show that the invasive grass Phragmites does not use gallic acid to encroach on native plants.
PLoS One 2012
This study used a novel comparative approach with six fish species living at diverse temperatures from the Antarctic to estuaries in Florida to identify specific amino acid changes in alpha A-crystallin that modify its ability to prevent protein aggregation. This study was reported on by the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Molecular Vision 2008
The first proteomic analysis of the zebrafish lens. We showed many similarities between zebrafish and mammalian lenses, suggesting that zebrafish would be a good model system for lens biology.
The FEBS Journal 2006
The one where we show that zebrafish have two alpha B-crystallins, unlike all other vertebrates examined to date. These two versions have diverged in function and expression pattern, providing a unique opportunity to dissect the many roles of human alpha B-crystallin and better determine what it does in the lens.
Molecular Vision 2005
The first analysis of anti-aggregation chaperone activity of zebrafish alpha crystallins. We showed that stability and chaperone activity were adjusted to the lower physiological temperature of the zebrafish, suggesting that these proteins evolve to maintain their function at different temperatures.
Integrative & Comparative Biology 2003
This review article stemmed from a symposium I co-organized at the 2002 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Toronto on the evolution of visual systems.
Molecular Vision 2002
We clone and characterize zebrafish alpha A-crystallin, showing that it has similar sequence and expression pattern to the human version.
Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1999
My first zebrafish crystallin paper completed during my postdoctoral fellowship at the Jules Stein Eye Institute of UCLA, setting the foundation for most of our lab’s future work.
Copeia 1999
My graduate training in the marine biology program at USC took place in the ichthyology section of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. The lab was focused on fish evolutionary relationships and ecology. In addition to my dissertation work on fish lens biochemistry I conducted this side project to describe an intertidal fish from California.