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

Sophia joined our wet lab in January, 2022. Her major was in Molecular and Cell Biology. For her Master’s project she is studying  whether two families of putative transporters are members of the MFS superfamily.

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

Jack joined the dry lab in December, 2022 and his major was in Molecular Cell Biology.  For his Master’s 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.

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.

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.

Steve joined the wet lab in January, 2023 as an undergrad.  In his project, Steve is  studying insertion sequence IS1 in E. coli to determine which of the six IS1 copies in the genome shows the most significant activity.

Madison joined the lab in August, 2020, as an undergrad and her major was Human Biology.  She obtained her Master’s degree in June 2023. She is currently working on the manuscript to publish her Master’s project.

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.

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.

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.

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

Charlene joined the lab in April, 2021 as an undergrad and she majored in Global Health. During here time in the lab, Charlene worked on a comparative genomics study involving endosymbionts of amoebas and clams.

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

Katie obtained her Master’s degree on April 2022, by defending the thesis: Histone-like Nucleoid Structuring (H-NS) Protein Silences the Beta-Glucoside (bgl) Utilization Operon by Formation of a DNA Loop in Escherichia coli. She also contributed to several published projects from the lab involving bioinformatics and wet lab work.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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/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 in the Saier lab.

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).