People (& Fish)
Principal Investigator: Tamily Weissman
Tamily Weissman is an associate professor in the Biology Department at Lewis & Clark College. She earned her undergraduate degree from Pomona College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University's Neurobiology & Behavior Program. As a graduate student in Arnold Kriegstein's lab at Columbia, Weissman studied neuronal proliferation and calcium dynamics in the embryonic rodent cerebral cortex. She then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Jeff Lichtman's lab, where she helped to develop the Brainbow strategy for mapping neural circuits in the mouse brain. In her own research lab at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Weissman has applied Brainbow and other fluorescence strategies to zebrafish, where she studies the development and function of neural circuits in the living brain.
Professor Weissman teaches a number of undergraduate biology courses at Lewis & Clark (see Goals & Training page).
Model organism: Danio rerio
We maintain a healthy colony of zebrafish (Danio rerio) in our laboratory. Zebrafish are a powerful model organism for studying neural development -- for two major reasons. First, they are transparent during the period of brain development, thus ideal for imaging the living, growing brain. Second, it is relatively straightforward to express and manipulate genes in zebrafish. We express fluorescent proteins in zebrafish and use specialized imaging techniques to visualize the brain as it forms.
BEING UPDATED ! Lots of great students not on here yet
Jonathan Torres, '18
Jonathan is a current biology major at Lewis & Clark College. He is working on a project that studies dividing neural progenitor cells in the zebrafish hindbrain. Jonathan originally started in the lab when he was a high school student, in Lewis & Clark's HHMI-sponsored high school summer program (2013).
Maritte O'Gallagher, '15
Maritte is a current biology major at Lewis & Clark College. She is working on a project that studies dividing neural progenitor cells in the zebrafish hindbrain. Maritte is specifically testing mechanisms that regulate the numbers of cells produced and how clonally related neurons function together.
Mako Gedi, '17
Mako is a rising senior Biochemistry & Molecular Biology major at Lewis & Clark College. She is working on a project that studies dividing neural progenitor cells in the zebrafish hindbrain.
Mehtab Sal, '17
Mehtab is a rising junior Biochemistry & Molecular Biology major at Lewis & Clark College. She is working on a project that studies the aggregation of alpha-synuclein, a protein involved in Parkinson's Disease.
Nicole Brockway
Nicole is our lab manager and the microscopy technician for the Lewis & Clark microscopy suite. She joined the lab in 2015.
Sylvia Nkombo Nkoula, '16
Sylvia worked in the lab during her senior year, completing a year-long independent study in the lab.
Isaac Boardman, '19
Isaac just joined the lab in the summer of 2016! Welcome, Isaac!
Helen Ippolito, '18
Helen just joined the lab in the summer of 2016! Welcome, Helen!
Previous lab members
Leah Weston, '14
Leah was in the lab from 2012-2014, and she completed a senior thesis in 2014. Leah worked to generate a new zebrafish model to study the aggregation of alpha-synuclein, a protein involved in Parkinson's Disease. She expressed a GFP-tagged version of alpha-synuclein in zebrafish neurons for the first time in our lab, and learned how to use in vivo FRAP (fluorescence recovery after bleaching) to study the protein's mobility. Leah received honorable mention for the Goldwater Fellowship in her junior year.
Kyla Hamling, '14
Kyla was in the lab from 2012-2014, and she completed a senior thesis in 2014. Kyla used confocal microscopy and immunohistochemistry to map the development of Purkinje neurons in the developing zebrafish cerebellum. She generated a quantitative spatio-temporal map of these neurons during the first two weeks of cerebellar development, which was published in Developmental Neurobiology in 2015. Kyla won the Goldwater Fellowship in her junior year.
Zachary Tobias, '12, Laboratory Technician and Microscopy Coordinator
Zac was the lab manager and microscopy technician from 2012-2015. Zac initially joined the lab as an undergraduate student in his senior year at Lewis & Clark. Zac generated most of the DNA constructs that we use in the lab, and focused on in vivo time-lapse imaging on Brainbow zebrafish. Zac studied the dynamics of proliferating neurons during brain development.
Krissy Lyon, '12 -- Now a PhD student at Harvard University - Neurobiology
Logan Higgins, '12 -- Now a PhD student at MIT
Lena Anoshochenko, '13
Ian Lake, '14 -- Now with M.A.T., a high school science teacher at Sherwood High School
Derek Warner-Reyes, '15
Audrey Smith, '15
Katie Welgan, St. Mary's Academy (High School)
Ian Matthews, '15
Yusuf Ashfaq, Beaverton Health & Science High School
Teresa Stackhouse, '16
Teresa is a current biology major at Lewis & Clark College, and has been in the lab since 2013. She is working on a project that studies the aggregation of alpha-synuclein, a protein involved in Parkinson's Disease. Teresa is performing in vivo FRAP experiments (fluorescence recovery after bleaching) and testing the effects of a potential therapeutic drug on alpha-synuclein mobility.
