Members of the Saier Lab

Head of laboratory

Dr.  Saier established the main research lines of the lab and coordinates/guides all lab members and projects. His expertise in a wide range of biological fields allowed the creation/maintenance/curation of  the Transporter Classification Database (TCDB) and the publication of more than 600 peer-reviewed papers.

Scientist/Molecular Biology

Dr. Zhang joined the Saier Lab in 2001. He has vast experience on multiple areas such environment-induced mutations in bacteria, transcriptional/metabolic regulation, protein/protein interactome and bacterial growth laws. As a supervisor, he guides students, visiting scholars and oversees all research activities in the wet lab.

Kevin joined the lab in spring, 2016, as an undergrad majoring in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Thanks to his expertise in Bioinformatics and Structural Biology, Kevin has contributed to multiple projects. His Master’s thesis is about the refinement of bioinformatic techniques to better classify families/superfamilies and improve structure/function predictions.

Harry joined the lab in March, 2018, as an undergrad majoring in Human Biology. He is expanding his original project for his Master’s degree, which seeks to elucidate the molecular mechanism following IS5-insertion into the fuc regulon in Escherichia coli.

Jianing joined the lab in October, 2019, as an undergrad majoring in Bioinformatics. He has participated in two bioinformatics projects. Currently, he is working on his Master’s project about the comparative genomics of viral genomes from the order Nidovirales with emphasis in family and functional associations.

Madison joined the lab in August, 2020, as an undergrad and her major was Human Biology.  For her Master’s project, she currently collaborates with another student to study the relationship between the LIC family and the VIC superfamily using a 3D structure-based approach.

Sophia joined our wet lab in January, 2022, as an undergraduate. Her major is in Molecular and Cell Biology. For her Master’s project she is studying the origin of the extra central TMSs that separate repeat units in several transporter families.

Jonathan joined the wet lab in March, 2022, as an undergrad majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology.  For his Master’s degree he is working on a wet lab approach to investigate the effect of IS26 on bacterial antibiotic resistance.

Hunter joined the lab in April, 2021, and his major is Biology and Bioinformatics. Hunter applies his programming skills to improve established bioinformatics tools, and he will participate in projects including superfamily characterization/expansion and comparative genomics.

Charlene joined the lab in April, 2021, and an undergrad and her major is Global Health. She is working on a comparative genomics study involving endosymbionts of amoebas and clams.

Juan joined the wet lab in October, 2021, as an undergrad majoring in Biochemistry.

Andre joined the dry lab in September, 2022. His major is in Bioinformatics.  In his project, Andre is  using a computational approach to predict of molecular function of hypothetical transporters within the MFS supperfamily.

Ritvik joined the dry lab in September, 2022. His major is in Bioinformatics.  In his project, RItvik collaborates with 3 other students to apply a comparative genomics approach to study the human microbiome and its role in the response to COVID-19 infections.

Allyson joined the lab in November, 2022, as an undergrad. Her major is General Biology. She is our web lab technician and makes sure that the equipment and supplies are in good condition and stocked. She contributes to the experimental needs of the research projects in the lab.

Bowen joined the lab in February, 2021. His major is Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Bowen’s project applies bioinformatic methods to study the relationship between ABC uptake systems and ABC2 export systems,  which requires both sequence- and structure-based approaches.

Vince joined the lab in April, 2021. His major is Molecular and Cell Biology. Vince is contributing to the project where we study the relationship between ABC uptake systems and ABC2 export systems. This includes the characterization and relationships between the different components of ECF uptake systems.

Professor/WLU Canada

Dr. Moreno-Hagelsieb took a sabbatical leave in our lab in 2015 as a bioinformatics specialist. Since then, he continues to collaborate with us in multiple projects involving Comparative Genomcis, Superfamily characterization/expansion, and the creation of novel annotation/curation pipelines for TCDB.

MD/St. Clare’s Denville Hospital

Dr. Reddy is our current database developer for TCDB. Over the years, he has contributed to multiple projects in the dry lab, including the adaptation of the ChEBI ontology to transported substrates in TCDB, characterization and expansion of superfamilies, characterization of transportormes, and comparative genomics.

Professor/LACCD

Dr. Reddy has collaborated with the lab multiple times over the years in projects ranging from famiiy/superfamily characterization and evolution, psychobiotics and their impact in mental health, the relationship between autism and the microbiome, the realtioship between eating meat and epidemics, and more.

Professor/UABC

Dr. Romero-Pérez collaborates with our lab by mining the literature to identify relevant transport-related papers to keep TCDB up to date.

Professor/ASU Egypt

Dr. Aboulwafa has visited us several times and has collaborated with our wet lab  on a variety of topics, including  transport of sugars and vitamins, regulation of crp gene expression,  protein-protein interactions, and  more.

Alumnus/Illumina

Pranav joined the lab in 2016 as an undergrad majoring in Bioinformatics. He developed and improved web applications and  stand-alone programs to help our research efforts in the dry lab. As a student, he contributed to several projects and continues to collaborate with the Saier lab.

PhD Student

Toheeb is a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences that rotated in our lab in the fall quarter 2022. Toheeb worked on the bioinformatic identification and characterization of novel superfamilies of spanin proteins.

Alumnus

Edward worked in the lab until November 2022 as a lab technician. He majored in Molecular en Cell biology.  During his time in the lab Edward was responsible for keeping the wet lab equipment in good shape and helped with the experimental needs of several projects.

Peter joined the lab in July, 2019, He obtained his Master’s degree in October 26, 2022, by defending the thesis: The Effects of DNA-Binding Proteins on IS Element Insertion Upstream of the bgl Operon in Escherichia coli.

Alumna

Farah joined the lab in October, 2020 as an undergrad. She double majored in pharmacological chemistry and chemical engineering. She was our wet lab assistant for one year.

Alumna

Nicole joined the lab in March, 2021.  She completed her BSc in General Biology. Nicole contributed to two comparative genomics projects involving 1)  four Metagenome Assembled Genomes from  the bacterial Candidate Phyla Radiation group; and 2) six sulfate-reducing bacteria.

Alumnus/Boston University

Yichi joined the lab in 2017 as an undergrad majoring in Bioinformatics and Environmental Chemistry. He developed several programs to help our research efforts in the dry lab. As a student, he contributed to several bioinformatics projects.

Alumnus

Blaine joined the lab in the 2020 fall quarter as an undergrad majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology. He participated in a Comparative Genomics project and studied the mechanism of IS5 insertion into the glpFK operon in Escherichia coli.

Alumnus

Ahmed joined the lab from October 2020 to  August 2021. He majored is General Biology and Global Health. In his wet lab project, Ahmed designed experiments to investigate the role of c-di-GMP in the regulation of the FlhDB operon of Escherichia coli during stationary phase.

Alumnus

On June 23, 2021, Dennis obtained his Master’s degree by defending the thesis: The effects of global and specific DNA-binding proteins on transcriptional regulation of the bgl operon. Some of his results have been published.

Alumnus

On January 28, 2021, Daniel obtained his Master’s degree  by defending the thesis: Discovery and characterization of the Phospholemman/SIMP/Viroporin (PSV) superfamily (published results).

Alumna/UCSF

On January 12, 2021, Nuo obtained her Master’s degree by defending the thesis: Structural and evolutionary relationships within the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) superfamily. Her experience allowed her to contribute to the curation of information in TCDB.

Alumnus

On March 19, 2020, Steven obtained his Master’s degree by defending the thesis: Comparative Metagenomic Analyses of Transporters Within the Archaeal Superphylum, Asgard.  (Published results). In addition, his experience allowed him to contribute to the curation of information in TCDB.

Alumna

Cassidy joined the lab in July 2019 as a  volunteer undergrad. She used bioinformatic techniques to characterize the transportome of the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfobacterium autotrophicum HRM2.

Scientist/Pakistan

Dr Khan joined our lab in 2018 as a visiting scholar. As part of her PhD, she worked for a year on the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for the generation of disease-resistant plants. She developed most of the protocols of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in our lab.

Alumnus

On July 26, 2018, Pauldeen obtained his Master’s degree by defending the thesis: Expansion of the Major Facilitator Superfamiy (MFS) to include novel transporters and the potential relationship between MFS and the LysE Superfamily (Published results).