Check out photos from the lab!
2024
April
Say it ain’t so! A DNA virus in the Mehle Lab? Yup. Cason received his PhD studying adenoviruses. As a postdoc in our lab, he stayed curious and had a side project where he built out a suite of adenovirus reporter viruses. Want to study early vs late gene expression? We’ve got you covered. Red vs green vs luminescence as your reporter? Check. What about making viral particles that are labeled. That too, and more. It was a privilege to make sure it got published, especially working closely with Cason’s PhD lab to finish this work. Thanks to Mack, Katie, Tanner and Joe for working with me, and teaching me about adenovirus.
Check it out. https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.00207-24
February
No longer just a pre-print: Jordan and Mitch’s work is now accepted at Nucleic Acids Research. Amazing progress for Jordan, who started as an undergrad in the lab mentored by Mitch, continued independent work that is now his first-author paper, and is currently in med school.
2023
December
📢 Preprint 📢. Jordan and Mitch’s work on proteins expressed from deletion-containing viral genomes (DelVGs) has been pre-printed. They show that there are hundreds of previously unappreciated viral proteins that are expressed during infection, some of which have novel functions. Check it out here. Bonus points to everyone who can find the Top Gun reference and our allusion to the stars — real stars, not Hollywood. Thanks to all of the collaborators too for making this an exciting paper (Brooke, Russell and Hutchinson labs). See our BlueSky thread on the work.
Andy received the Vilas Mid-Career Investigator Award. This reflects the hard work, collaborative nature and success of the group. Congrats to Andy and the lab.
New lab member alert! Very excited to have Sarah Nelson join the lab as a grad student from MDTP. Sarah graduated from Middlebury College (go Panthers!) and then worked with Nick Heaton at Duke study influenza virus. She brings lots of experience and new ideas to the group.
Of course it was Rodrigo who made sure we were in the holiday spirit (guest appearance from Nate Sherer too!)
July-December
So the lab news has been quiet. Why? Andy was on sabbatical working with David Bauer’s lab at the Crick in London. David and his group were incredibly generous with their time, patient with my questions, insightful with their comments, and just a fun group to work with. It was great to be back on the bench and pursue new questions and techniques. It was also the perfect chance to visit friends and colleagues, with work trips to ESWI (Valencia), Munster, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University Glasgow, the Pasteur, Imperial College, and King’s College.
July
Cells don’t care if it’s a holiday. Rodrigo, who’s from Chile, makes sure they get in the American spirit.
June
ASV 2023 was a great chance to reconnect with old (and new) lab friends. Cait (PhD candidate at Duke), Steve (faculty at Lovelace) and Saptarshi Banerjee (PhD from the Arindam Mondal’s lab, who was the first Mehle Lab postdoc) joined us for lunch.
We say goodbye to Jordan (white shirt). Jordan is heading off to crush med school at UW Madison. Doing our best to twist his arm so he comes back to us for a summer research rotation. Jordan joined as an undergrad and stayed two more years as a researcher. A real pleasure having him in the lab and watching him grow as a scientist.
Grace made the lab proud with an excellent thesis defense. Congrats! Like the PhD boss she is, she gets to ride a T-Rex.
May
The GRC was south of Barcelona this year. I was excited to present Cason’s work and Grace presented her analyses of IFIT2 and IFIT3. But, one of the best things about this job is going new places. Awed by my visit to Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia and Casa Mila.
🚨🚨🚨Mitch Ledwith, who received his PhD from the lab in 2022, was awarded the 2022 Raymond L. Erikson Exceptional Thesis Award. Congrats! Incredibly well deserved, and especially satisfying to see someone who was so intellectual generous get acknowledged for their work and impact.
March
Grace and Owen share their techniques for capturing protein:protein interactions in situ. They describe the use of proximity biotinylation, with the enzyme AirID, to identify proteins that interact with IFIT2. Congrats on a paper that we hope will be a great resource for the community.
Schaack, G.A., Sullivan, O.M., Mehle, A., 2023. Identifying Protein-Protein Interactions by Proximity Biotinylation with AirID and splitAirID. Current Protocols 3, e702.
open access: https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.702
Just a little bit of news – Andy received word that he will be promoted to Professor effective July. It’s not longer Full Professor, just Professor for some reason. So, there’s that.
January
A warm welcome to Rodrigo, the lab’s newest graduate student. Rodrigo is in the CMB program Andres Bello University – Chile where he received his undergrad and master’s degree.
2022
October
We’ve long be interested in how some broadly antiviral proteins are occasionally used by specific viruses as proviral cofactors. Cason summarized our current thinking in this great review that just came out.
June
June 14 was a busy day, as Cason rocked his talk at NSV2020, I got to present data generated by Mitch, and Katie’s paper came online.
Check out the short description of Katie’s work in our twitter thread or the paper here
Braga has turned out to be a great spot for the meeting. The science is not the only thing on fire. Ben tenOever and Ryan Langlois shared a T-bone steak at one of our dinners, and it came with a little extra flair.
April
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy: Some friendly Mario Kart competition revealed hidden skills for Jordan and Cason. If this science thing doesn’t work out, maybe pro gamer is an option?
March
Excited to welcome new postdoc/research scientist Zhenyu Zhang. Zhenyu brings a strong background in influenza with excellent papers studying ANP32 protein in the lab of Dr. Xiaojung Wang at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.
February
We are sad to say goodbye to our Lab Manager and Research Specialist extraordinaire Liz Feltman. Liz has moved up to a higher management position in industry with MedLab 2020. We are excited for her new opportunities. To celebrate her leaving, she led lab games where we went through several competitive rounds of Exploding Kittens. Somehow we’re all still talking to each other, so I’d consider that a success. Good luck Liz.
January
Happy to announce that Mitch Ledwith had a very successful thesis defense. His presentation showed off the impressive range of his projects and put forward exciting new ways to think about innate immunity. His first project was published in Nat Micro and we’re wrapping now something totally different. Good luck to Mitch as he flexes his computational skills at La Jolla Labs.
We welcome Thomas Nipper as the newest graduate student in the lab. Thomas is part of MDTP and we’re excited to have him join Team Flu.
2021
December
Happy to announce that Katie Amato is now Dr. Katie Amato. A stellar thesis presentation and closed-door defense. The first part of her thesis is in revision, and hopefully accepted soon, and can be found here. Excited to hear more as she begins her next chapter at Genetech.
October
R-oh yea-1! We received a fundable score on or recent R01 submission. We’re funded for another 5 yrs! Congrats to the lab, who made it possible. Very excited to see what we discover with this grant.
September
Congrats to Steve. He will start his own lab at Lovelace Biomedical in Albuquerque. This is a huge move for him, and the lab couldn’t be prouder. Steve joined us in 2015 and has opened new areas of work in the group studying ANP32A and cMECR, both through the lens of differential splicing. Steve will continue to probe virus:host interactions and splicing in his own group. Check out the exciting projects (and job opportunities) at the Baker Lab. We had a celebration to mark his success at the local brewery Hop Haus. There was a 4:1 ratio of beer:food on the final bill. Seems about right….
Some top-secret news from lab members Katie and Steve is on the way…
(update — Steve has a new job and will open his own lab in October. Katie has a job at Genentech waiting for her after her defense.)
August
We say goodbye to student hourly Gabby Feltman. We really appreciate her steady help through the last year, and wish her luck in her accelerated nursing program.
It’s a privilege to be welcomed into the lives of lab members and share big life events outside of work. The Mehle Lab had a mini-reunion as current and some past members joined together to celebrate Steve’s marriage to Kaitlin. A rocking party at the Majestic in Madison, with a first dance and toast to the crowd shown below. Congratulations! (PS: as a virologist, Steve made sure all guests were vaccinated, this was before the big delta growth in WI, and the lab all tested negative afterwards).
Tony and Kaitlin were back in town. Thrilled they stopped by the lab and caught us up on their new careers at NEB and Additional Ventures, respectively. But, I’m slightly worried about their reception. We went to the lab-favorite bar The Library and saw they had a welcome back sign specifically for them. Hmm…….
R21! During grant review, sometimes you’re the hammer, and sometimes you’re the nail. Thankfully, study section felt that we were the hammer with our proposal to study influenza virus and ADP-ribosylation. Excited to have a fundable score and to be able to push this work forward with our collaborator Anthony Leung and his lab. Really appreciate the confidence the reviewers have placed in us and the proposed work.
June
It’s not all about science. The great part of working as a team is that we get to experience the joys and successes inside and outside of the lab. Steve and his partner Kaitlin surprised the lab by getting married before jetting off to Iceland for a honeymoon (bottom left). Talk about a mic drop. We’re looking forward to their celebration party later this summer.
Clearly there is something in the air, as lab alum Gloria also just shared news of her engagement (bottom right). Hopefully she comes through Madison soon so we can celebrate.
Congrats to all.
May
Welcome to Jordan Ranum. Jordan has been working in the lab as an undergrad, but now joins us as a research intern for some postbac experience. We’re excited to have Jordan work with Mitch on fun projects about IFITs and host defenses.
January
Another year, another lab photo. I love this tradition. For the last 6(?) years the lab has worked in secret to produce a photo. It started with funny family portraits (here and here). Then moved to a Brady Bunch theme. Then a Vogue cover. Then Bitmoji. And now Hollywood. The creativity is my favorite part.
December
How do you have a holiday party during COVID19? One of my favorite things is to host holiday parties at our house with the Harrison lab. It is a perfect time to celebrate the community and teamwork of the labs, and enjoy some good food and drink. That was not possible due to COVID19, so we brought the party to the people. We barrel aged and bottled cocktails for our labs, with a precisely tuned and optimized protocol, of course.
Happy to welcome Owen Sullivan to the lab! Owen rotated with Grace, and joined us permanently in December. She is a graduate student in the CMB program and comes with excellent virology chops having earned her masters with Sarah McDonald Esstman at Wake Forest studying rotaviruses. Owen is excited to move to a “simpler” virus, influenza.
October
Very excited to announce the next step for our polymerase pundit, our RdRP artist, our trimer tyrant Tony Dawson — after his successful defense and a short time to wrap up, Tony is about start to start as a postdoc at New England Biolabs outside of Boston. Yeh, that NEB. He’s using his biochemical skills on RNA and protein to explore new areas at NEB. It is sad to see Tony leave, and there will be a big hole in the lab personality (and a serious drop in the number of puns and bad jokes), but we are also excited for his next step and proud of his career advancement. COVID19 prevented us from having a blowout party worth of Tony, but we did our best with an outdoor BBQ.
September
We’re lucky enough to have two recent publications in PLOS Pathogens.
Cason penned a great Pearl of viral host factor studies, thinking broadly about what we know, why we know it, and how this creates blind spots. We end with discussions about how new techniques can explore an “undiscovered country” of virus:host interactions. Cason is working hard to push this envelope with his own new techniques, so stay tuned for our answer to some of these questions.
Tony published another one of his thesis chapters. Prior work in the lab, including that from Tony, had investigated the role of phosphorylation in control viral RNP assembly. Tony now investigated whether phosphorylation could directly control the polymerase. He identified and characterized phosphorylation sites on PB1, the catalytic polymerase subunit. His work nicely showed that phosphorylation can control RNA binding and even bias the polymerase towards replication by shutting down transcription. Recent structures of the polymerase allowed us to put our findings into context as the polymerase cycles through each step needed for replication or transcription.
August
I-FIT you not, our paper is finally out at Nature Microbiology (thanks for the pun Mitch). Check it out here.
This is an exciting story where things aren’t always what they seem. It has 3 CRISPR screens, CLIP-Seq, ribosome profiling, and some good old-fashioned virology. We showed that IFIT2 and IFIT3, proteins classically grouped as anti-viral proteins, instead play a pro-viral role for influenza A virus. Vy and Mitch are co-first authors. Vy initiated this project with a clever genome-wide CRISPR screen and validation, followed by a deep dive into mechanism by Mitch and his impressive bioinformatic skills. IFIT2 binds and boosts translation of influenza virus mRNAs. Not only did we understand why IFIT2 is pro-viral for influenza virus, by defining its function we likely explained why it is anti-viral for others. It was a wonderful collaboration with many other groups, including Van Thamamongood in the Schwemmle lab who got very similar results from her independent CRISPR screen. So much better to collaborate than to rush out competing stories.
July
Kaitlin at the bench.
We are happy/sad to say farewell to post-doc Kaitlin Davis. We are extremely happy to see her move on to a dream job. Kaitlin is the innaugural Program and Grants Manager for Additional Ventures. She is helping to build a research portfolio focussed on single ventricle defects, a congenital heart defect in newborns. This is an amazing opportunity — one that exploits Kaitlin’s critical thinking and leadership skill — and we couldn’t be happier.
But, we are sad to lose her as a colleague and team member. She has a few exciting science stories that are still cooking in the lab, so stay tuned. We couldn’t have the normal farewell blowout. Instead, we enjoyed a nice socially distanced picnic and beers. She gave the lab a stupendous farewell gift, adopting some fancy chickens at a local farm for us. She did her best to match lab members with chicken breeds. See below if you think she nailed it.
June
We are looking for a new postdoc to join our team studying influenza virus and how it exploits the host (even turning antiviral proteins proviral!). Check out the announcement. Drop Andy a line with any questions and then send in your application.
The hits keep coming for Tony, PhD. Congrats on a successful thesis defense, and great graduate career. Keep your eyes peeled for a few more papers to round out his thesis.
Congrats to Tony for the publication of his paper in Annual Reviews of Virology. We were very excited to be invited to write this review with our mass spec collaborator Josh Coon and his student Gary Wilson. Check out Post-translation Regulation of Influenza Virus Replication.
May
A few more farewells:
Jo (Supasek) Kongsomros returns to Thailand. Jo was a visiting scientist using his Royal Golden Jubilee PhD scholarship to spend part of his PhD in our lab. Jo is from Mahidol University in Bangkok working under Dr. Arunee Thitithanyanont. We were lucky to have him in the group. Despite the CoV-related shutdown, Jo made amazing progress in a short time (kudos to his mentor Cason too for making it such a successful visit).
Abby Hoover, undergrad extraordinaire, leaves us for the NIH. She will be a postbaccalaureate researcher in the IRTA program.
LSRF-yeah! CoV got you down? Us too. That is why it was all the more exciting to learn that Cason received a Life Sciences Research Foundation fellowship. CONGRATS! LSRF fellows are selected from a highly competitive international pool of application. ~1000 people apply, and about 25 awards are made. This is an amazing honor for Cason reflecting his stellar graduate work and ambitious postdoc proposal. We are thankful to LSRF and thrilled to bask in the LSRF glow that shines over the lab too. Can’t wait to see what his project brings.
We lift a glass to toast Gloria and wish her well on her new adventure. (We do this virtually, given that we are all following safe social distancing guidelines). Gloria joined the lab in December of 2014 and quickly got to work exploiting natural difference in gene expression to identify cellular factors that impact influenza virus replication. She is taking here expertise to the CDC where she is an ORISE fellow. Congrats and good luck Gloria.
what happened to winter 2020? Oh yeh, SAR-CoV-2
Lots happened, the university shut down, but the lab kept moving forward.
December
Ready for the annual holiday lab party? ✅
Congratulations Dr. Larson. Gloria successfully defended her PhD. An excellent seminar to a packed room, followed by a great performance in the closed-door exam. Excited to see her next steps as she finishes interviewing for postdocs.
November
Heading to Kansas for a visit with Tony Fehr. Excited to hear about the work there. Also need to talk to the person who made this poster to learn how they really feel about influenza virus.
Grace has an F30 under review this week. She set up a little shrine to the gods of Impact Score, and lab members have left offerings. Depending out the outcome, maybe this will be a new lab tradition.
(PS: Seems to have worked. Expect more lab shrines.)
October
Grace and Andy have a chapter that was just accepted as part the new book “Influenza: The Cutting Edge” edited by Yoshi Kawaoka and Gabrielle Neumann. Keep your eyes out for our chapter: Experimental Approaches to Identify Host Factors Important for Influenza Virus. When finished, the entire book should be open access and a great resource to the community. Nice work Grace.
September
You had me at “accepted in principle.” Our paper on EPS8 has gone from a pre-print at biorxiv to in press at Cell Reports. Congrats to Gloria, Vy, Christina and Steve from the lab, and our collaborators in the groups of Jens Kuhn and Sheli Rhadoshitzky.
August
Andy had a fun trip to Options X in Singapore where he got to present the lab’s work in the Viral Replication session. Really exciting science and great to connect with colleagues (e.g. Anice Lowen and Seema Lakdawala below).
Another year, another Hodonger Merrison 4-lab pic, with the Hoskins lab, the Willdonger lab, the Harrison lab and ours. This is the 6th year running. Not yet sure if it is cute or cult-like that the lab showed up in their matching tie-dyes from Christina’s farewell party.
July
#ASV2019 here we come. Hope to see you at our talks and posters.
Traitors? Andy and lab alum Vy just co-authored a paper on bacterial pathogenesis. They helped Laurie Ristow in Rod Welch’s lab study cellular receptors for the hemolysin toxin produced by uropathogenic E. coli. This was a tour-de-force by Laurie, requiring a QUINTUPLE knockout made by CRISPR/Cas9 to show that the beta subunit of beta2 integrins is sufficient for hemolysin cytotoxicity. See this exciting story here.
Andy took a trip recently. Does this make it a work trip? #worklifebalance
Do you like hanging out with sweaty people in spandex? (duh, of course!) Some of the MehleLab will be doing The Chillest Century Ever, or parts of it, on July 6. How can you go wrong with coffee, hotdogs, donuts, beer and ice cream, all under the guise of doing something healthful? Give a shout if you want to connect.
June
Welcome Liz Feltman! Liz joins us as a research specialist after two years of experience working at UW Madison as an undergrad researcher and two more years working in industry. We’re excited to have her join Team Flu.
One of the fun things about reading and reviewing papers is being asked to synthesize data and write commentaries of particularly interesting studies. Steve and Andy were asked to write an eLife Insight on the recent ANP32 papers from the Barclay and Wang labs. Unlike most scientific writing we do, this was specifically geared to a lay audience so has a different tone than most of our work. You’re supposed to be able to read it under 8 minutes. Can you? Try it here.
May
Working hard at the GRC. Gloria gave a great poster (x2, for both sessions) and Tony rocked his talk. We might have also stolen some time to enjoy the great location.
GR-C you there? The Mehle lab is heading to the GRC Viruses and Cells meeting.Both Tony and Gloria were accepted to the meeting, and Andy will be there as well. Stop by Gloria’s poster to hear about her pre-print on EPS8 as entry factor for flu, listen to Tony’s talk that builds on our phosphorylation studies, or come chat with Andy about anti-viral proteins that have been corrupted to perform pro-viral functions.
We won! (not really). Another year, another Monona 5k/20k. We ran as a team and we were the fastest virus-themed group (we were also the only virus-themed group, but stop splitting hairs). It was a beautiful day and fun for all of us. Glad we were joined by those who don’t normally run and several honorary lab members.
March
Heading to Halifax for a visit hosted by Craig McCormick. Very excited to meet the great community there. Tried this last fall, and got as close as 200 ft from the ground, but couldn’t land due to fog. Ever have a flight track like this? After being diverted, we ultimately flew back to Newark (KEWR) and then on to Madison, having spent 19hr traveling to go nowhere.
February
For the second year in a row, Kaitlin represents the MehleLab in Sun Prairie to observe Jimmy the Groundhog. Jimmy saw his shadow, meaning an early spring (and that the reviews of our papers this spring will all be favorable).
January 2019
Only in Wisconsin. A meat judging competition was held on campus, and the leftovers were given away. In grad student tradition, the lab pounced on the chance for free food, hence, the first ever Mehle Meat Swap. I mean, what could go wrong with cured meats of questionable provenance shared in a microbiology building?
Mehle Lab 
