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.

Grad students

Undergrad students

Volunteers

Collaborators

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.

Juan joined the wet lab in October, 2021, as an undergrad majoring in Biochemistry. In his project, Juan is attempting to determine the effects of orientation and distances of IS elements upon bglGFB operon activation.

Clark joined the dry lab in January, 2022, and his major is in Bioinformatics. Clark will apply his software development skills to several bioinformatics projects in the dry lab, including superfamily characterization/expansion and comparative genomics.

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.

Gautham joined the wet lab in September, 2022 as an undergrad majoring in Bioinformatics.  In his project, Gautham collaborates with three other students to apply a comparative genomics approach to study the human microbiome and its role in the response to COVID-19 infections.

Visvesh joined the wet lab in September, 2022 as an undergrad majoring in Bioinformatics.  In his project, Visvesh collaborates with three other students to apply a comparative genomics approach to study the human microbiome and its role in the response to COVID-19 infections.

Coby joined the dry lab in December, 2022 as an undergrad. His major is in Bioinformatics.  In his project, Coby is working on developing a fast method to identify transportomes for high-throughput processing of genomes.

Jack joined the dry lab in December, 2022 as an undergrad. His major is in Molecular Cell Biology.  In his project, Jack is looking at how insertion elements in transferase genes result in lipopolysaccharide modifications on the surface of E. coli and cause increased resistance to strong antibiotics.

Sofia joined out wet lab in January, 2023, as an undergrad and her major is Molecular Cell Biology. In her research, she is studying whether IS1 plays a major role in transposition.

Aditi obtained her master’s degree in our lab on March 2023. She has contributed to  a comparative genomics  published project and she is currently working now on the manuscript to publish her master’s thesis project in collaboration with another grad student.

Jianing received his master’s degree in our lab in March 2023. He has contributed to several published bioinformatics projects. Currently he is working on the preparation of the manuscript to publish his Master’s thesis project.

Owen joined the lab in February, 2023. As an undergrad, he studied Cognitive Science and majored in Machine Learning and Neural Computation. He then completed a master’s degree in Computer Science. Owen is currently working on developing an algorithm to classify proteins in their family based on the architecture of their domain composition.

Vince joined the lab in April, 2021 as an undergrad. His major is Molecular and Cell Biology. After his graduation in 2022, he volunteers in the lab to complete his project where we studies the relationship between ABC uptake systems and ABC2 export systems. This includes the characterization and relationships between the different components of ECF uptake systems.

Charlene joined the lab in April, 2021 as an undergrad, and became a volunteer in January 2023. Her major is Global Health. After her graduation, she continues to work on a comparative genomics study involving endosymbionts of amoebas and clams.

Yiran joined the lab in April, 2023 as a volunteer international exchange undergrad student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His major is Bioinformatics. Yiran is working on upgrading in-house bioinformatics tools that will benefit multiple projects in the lab.

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/UO Pakistan

Dr. Zafar first joined our lab as a visiting scholar in 2016. Since then, he has worked on various projects involving comparative genomics of gut microbes, such as Salmonella, E. coli, Lactobacillus, Bacteroides, and Bifidobacterium. He continues to actively collaborate with us.

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.

Harry joined the lab in March, 2018, as an undergrad majoring in Human Biology. He completed his Master’s degree on April 20, 2023, where he elucidated the molecular mechanism behind IS5-driven activation of the fucOA operon in Escherichia coli.

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.

Peter obtained his Master’s degree in October 2022, by defending the thesis: The Effects of DNA-Binding Proteins on IS Element Insertion Upstream of the bgl Operon in Escherichia coli. He has contributed to other project in the lab and his thesis is being prepared for publication.

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.

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.

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.

WUSTL

Dr. Meng joined the lab in October, 2020.  She worked with two other undergrad students on collecting evidence to determine whether the LIC family, which includes GABA receptors, is a distant member of the VIC superfamily.

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.

Alumna

Mai joined the lab in September, 2020, as an undergrad. During 10 months, 1) she curated ABC  systems in TCDB; 2) she studied the relationship of the ABC LptBFG family to ABC type 2 systems; and 3) in collaboration with other students, she studied the relationship between the S and T subunits within ECF systems.

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.

Andrew joined the lab in July, 2017, as an undergrad with major in Molecular Biology. He studied how the expression of a metal ion efflux gene cluster in the bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans can be influenced by insertion elements and the role of  the three-dimensional structure of the DNA in this process.

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.

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).

Scientist/Iran

Dr. Heidari joined the lab in 2017 and spent over a year doing research as part of her PhD. She worked on two projects: the characterization and comparative genomics of transportomes within the genus Bdellovibrio, as well as an experimental study of a riboflavin transporter in Bdellovibrio exovorous JSS.