Check out photos from the lab!
2018 and prior
December
The tradition continues. For the 4th year running, the lab has created a surprise portrait for Andy to hang in the office. Do you have a favorite? Serious science face, or my paper just got accepted face?
October
Had a great visit to UVM hosted by Jason Botten and long-time flu colleague Emily Bruce. Very cool arenavirus and hantavirus work happening in the Botten lab. Had no idea that arenaviruses package ribosomes — why? Also learned that stuff is much large in Vermont.
The lab was well represented at Wisc-e-sota, a joint U Wisconsin and U Minnesota virology retreat. Gloria spoke, while most others presented posters. Tony was the big poster winner, receiving the traditional Wisc-e-sota award of whisk(e)y and soda. Well done all.
September
Do you like flu and PTMs? Of course you do! Check out Tony’s PLOS Pathogens Pearl on the topic. Nice work Tony.
Woohoo. Steve’s ANP32A splicing paper is out in Cell Reports. Clearly shows that birds are different in their capacity to support influenza virus polymerase function, and not all avian ANP32A are equal. Pretty cool implications on viral evolution and host range both within birds and between birds and people. Congrats to Steve and Mitch. See the paper here, and how it evolved from the original bioRxiv version here.
August
Happy to welcome Grace Schaack (CMB/MSTP) to the lab as she starts the PhD part of her MD/PhD.
2-for-2. Mitch and Katie both passed their prelim exams. Well done! Welcome to status.
July
Boom! Steve’s ANP32A paper has been accepted. Keep an eye out for it shortly, or read the preprint here. Congrats Steve.
Do you like RNA virus replication machinery? Do you like post-translational modifications? Let’s be honest, who doesn’t? Tony wrote a great primer on post-translational control during influenza virus infections. His PLoS Pathogens Pearl entitled “Flu’s Cues: exploiting host post-translational modifications to direct the influenza virus replication cycle” has been accepted and will be out soon.
Gloria, Mitch and Tony rocked their talks at #ASV2018. Great representation by the lab at this year’s meeting. As an added bonus, we had the first MehleLab reunion lunch, with James Kirui taking a break from his postdoc at the NIH to attend the meeting and join us for lunch.
June
Andy represented the lab at the Negative Strand Virus meeting where he presented Vy and Mitch’s story. Learning about science in Verona was tough, with the food, culture, wine and cappuccinos all getting in the way. This is one of our favorite meetings, and it did not disappoint.
May
We survived. Mehle Lab had another go at the Monona 5K/20K on May 5. New guy Cason led the lab (and took 9th overall). Great day of running for Mitch, Katie, Cason, Steve and Andy (left to right). Thanks Steve for organizing.
April
NS-F yeah! Congrats to Mitch for receiving an NSF-GRFP.
March
Science paparazzi on the prowl – celebrity sighting when Stacy Horner has dinner with Tony Dawson and Sherer Lab members
March 6: Andy will be at UTSW for a seminar hosted by Julie Pfeiffer. Come out and say hello.
February
Our first preprint is up. Nice work Steve (with an assist by Mitch): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/02/274613
2/9 Snow day: 5 inches of snow overnight shut down school for Ryder, so he joined the lab and motivated a bit of sledding on campus. Here Ryder gives Steve a little help launching downhill towards the frozen lake. Steve ran the sled like a pro and stopped just before the path (and the drop into the trees and the lake).
2/2/18 Tenure! Both Melissa (@HarrisonFlyLab) and I got the call from our departmental chairs that we have been granted tenure. We’re very excited and thankful. My success as a PI has been the direct result of the hard work, creativity, productivity and friendship of all members of the lab (past and present). Tenure isn’t official until the Regents say so on July 1, but that didn’t stop us from celebrating in the best way we know how:
January 2018
Cason King will be joining the Mehle Lab as a postdoc this May. He has done great work on viral mimicry in the Mymryk lab, with the last bits of his thesis just being accepted into J Virol. Congrats.
Andy got to go back to Berkeley to present in the “Confronting Persistent Epidemics” symposia hosted by the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases. Great to be on the same stage as Stacey Schultz-Cherry and John Yewdell.
Kaitlin Davis officially starts in the lab. Welcome!
December 2017
Cookies brought into the lab. Frostie knows what he did (PS: it involves finishing a reagent, putting the tube back into the freezer, and waiting for someone to order it. Don’t be like Frostie.).
The Harrison Lab creates possibly the best pun-related Drosophila-themed holiday ornament ever.
October 2017
The Mehle Lab is well represented at the joint training grant meeting for virology at UW-Madison and University of Minnesota (aka Wisc-e-sota). The science was great, and the sunset wasn’t too bad either.
September 2017
Going to ESWI? Look for Steve, who is giving his ESWI young investigator prize talk. Ask him about his new host factors, his love of Malört, and say hi to the lab.
August 2017
Nothing to see here. Sadly, the clouds decided to join our eclipse viewing in Madison, but they didn’t stop us from seeing 85% coverage. Not so for Andy, who saw the whole thing in Jackson WY with crystal blue skies. Shadow bands right after totality made the entire ground appear to be wiggling and wavy. Yeah science!
Steve hits a home run with appointment to the Microbes Health and Disease training grant. This is the second competitive fellowship to support Steve’s postdoc. Well done.
We’re excited that Kaitlin Davis will be joining the Mehle Lab! Kaitlin has done excellent work training in John Patton’s lab, and we look forward to having her use that expertise to study flu.
July 2017
Congrats to Arindam, Tony, Steve and our collaborators. Our paper has been accepted to eLife. Keep an eye out for the pre-print “Influenza virus recruits host protein kinase C to control assembly and activity of its replication machinery” coming soon. Tony celebrates with an eLife neck tattoo!
We are excited to welcome Christina Higgins to the lab as our new research specialist/lab
manager. Christina comes with excellent experience from Nate Sherer’s group, and we are very happy to have her join the group.
The commute to work today was a little different for Andy. He is in Hong Kong teaching in the HKU-Pasteur Virology Course. One of the cool perks of science — meeting great scientists in amazing locations.
June 2017
#ASV2017. The Mehle Lab will be out in force at ASV. Seek us out to talk flu, discuss the postdoc openings in the lab, or for local food/drink recommendations.
May 2017
BWF! Andy has been named a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease. This prestigious award provides 5 years of funding to assistant professors. Congrats to friends of the MehleLab who also received one of the twelve awards this year: Catherine Blish, Stacey Horner, and Adam Lauring.
Congrats to Jon who received a Bose fellows position to perform research in India this summer.
Our bioluminescent viruses continue to shine in a collaboration with the Subbarao group. Congrats to Rita and co-authors for our recently accepted mBio paper, and thanks for involving us in this exciting project. Coming soon to an mBio near you:
In vivo imaging of influenza virus infection in immunized mice
Rita Czakó, Leatrice Vogel, Elaine W Lamirande, Kevin W Bock, Ian N Moore, Ali H Ellebedy, Rafi Ahmed, Andrew Mehle, and Kanta Subbarao
April 2017
Multiple members learned that they received talks at this year’s ASV meeting in Madison. Woo-hoo Gloria, Steve and Tony.
Please welcome Ari Domek to the lab.
March 2017
The Mehle Lab will be presenting a talk at the Gordon Research Conference Virus and Cells. We hope to see you there.
January 2017
Welcome to the new year. We are excited to welcome two new PhD students to the lab — Katie Amato and Mitch Ledwith. New people of course means new lab pictures. Mitch didn’t have any, so he posed for some natural action shots. What kind of lab would we be if we didn’t have a behind-the-scenes montage too. Vy (the cinematographer) and Tony (the show runner) coach Mitch to look science-y.
We also happy to announce that Vy Tran is now officially a postdoc in the lab.
November 2016
New postdoc positions are available in the lab. We’re recruiting up to two post-docs for NIH-funded projects. Download the advert here. Follow in the footsteps of Arindam (see news item below).
We said goodbye to postdoc Arindam Mondal. Arindam has started his own faculty position at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. We’re sad to lose his generous and fun personality and his scientific insight. But, we couldn’t be happier that he is now running his own lab. We’re expecting great things.
October 2016
Happy Halloween from the Mehle Lab, home of the 2013 and 2014 departmental costume contest champs (a joint Mehle and Knoll lab project)!
2016: Theme: Classics; Our costume: Pacman (the dots had “data” written on them for the PI to eat)
2015: Theme: Famous Books; Our costume: The Bible
2014: Theme: TV Shows; Our costume: The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross
2013: Theme: Cartoons; Our costume: Captain Planet
New postdoc positions are available in the lab. We’re recruiting up to two post-docs for NIH-funded projects. Download the advert here.
September 2016
James Kirui‘s final paper from his thesis has been accepted to Journal of Virology. Check out what we learned about how ubiquitination impacts influenza polymerase activity. Spoiler alert: every member of the viral replication machinery is ubiquitinated, but it not all about proteasomal degradation.
Congrats to Gloria Larson and Tony Dawson for being selected through a competitive application process to become trainees on the University of Wisconsin’s Virology Training Grant.
August 2016
Professor Mondal! Postdoc Arindam Mondal will become Professor Arindam Mondal. Arindam has accepted a job offer to become an assistant professor and run his own group at the India Institute of Technology Kharagpur in the School of Biosciences. While we will be sad to see him leave, we couldn’t be prouder of the work he has done and his accomplishment.
8/22- Introducing Dr. Vy Tran!
Vy gave a fantastic seminar and defense of her thesis work: Development and Use of Influenza Reporter Viruses to Define Human Host Factors for Influenza Virus Replication.
Vy, PhD has a nice ring to it. Congrats.
8/18: What do you get when you cross a neurobiologist with a splicing person and cross a flu virologist with someone studying transcription during development? The 3rd annual Hodonger-Merrison 4-lab picnic with the Mehle lab, the Harrison lab, the Hoskins lab, and the Wildonger lab.
This year the much anticipated party gift was a coffee mug. While I’m sure it is blazingly obvious, that is a neuron (wearing a cowboy hat, because) lassoing an influenza virion with a splicing lariat as it attempts to cross the maternal to zygotic transition…..of course.
July 2016
7/18: Just another Monday morning in the Mehle Lab
Congrats on passing your qualifying exam Gloria.
For those following at home, the score is now -80 freezer 2, outlet 0. This is getting ridiculous (and a little too close to freezer failure or fire for my taste).
The score is currently Mehle Lab -80 freezer 1, Outlet 0. Thankfully only the outlet melted, and not the freezer, and no fire. Close call!
Great news for Arindam, who has received a call-back for a final faculty interview back in India.
Congrats to our collaborators Erik Karlsson and Stacey Schultz-Cherry for their paper on flu vaccination and obesity accepted to mBio. Thanks for including us in the work.
June 2016
Farewell James! We wish James all the luck as he begins his postdoc in Eric Freed’s lab at the NIH.
Blacksburg will never be the same. Well, that’s highly unlikely. But, we can guess that Virginia Tech has never seen a “nerd prom” quite like the closing party for ASV 2016. Congrats to Arindam, Gloria, Tony and Steve for their excellent talks. Also, Andy represented the lab well with his State-of-the-Art talk. See you all in Madison for ASV 2017.
New postdoc positions are available in the lab. We’re recruiting up to two post-docs for NIH-funded projects. Download the advert here or look at the listing at the ASV jobs site. We will be at ASV, so if you’re there and want to talk, reach out to set up an informal meeting.
You’ve Got Mail: The NOA for our R01 arrived today! Now I need to get back to the bench….
Tony started the month off and made the lab proud with a very successful qualify exam. Congrats Tony! Now get back to the bench….
May 2016
Arindam hosted a lab BBQ to celebrate the return of good weather (finally) and the successful completion of the Lake Monona 20k (Steve and James) and the 5k (Andy pushing Ryder). Honorary lab member Kimberly donated a prize won at Brasserie V — 3L of Evil Twin Bozo Beer. Holy cow!
April 2016
Busy on May 7? Would you like to join the Mehle Lab for the Lake Monona 20K? Drop a line to join the group for a leisurely run around Lake Monona, including the free PBR available at the 9mi water stop.
Spring has sprung in Madison, along with new cartoons of the viral polymerase by Vy. Meet Paul Polymerase (right), and his transcriptionally active partner Paulina Polymerase (left). They are “anatomically” correct based on the newest structures from the great work by Fodor, Cusack, Crepin, et al. What, you didn’t know that the influenza polymerase had eyebrows?
We are wowed to have been selected for funding during the UW2020:WARF Discovery Initiative. Our project uses genomic approaches to identify host regulators of pathogen infections. It is another successful collaboration with the Friedrich Lab and Gitter Lab.
March 2016
3/25: Lab members were excited to learn that they will be giving talks at ASV 2016. Here we come Blacksburg!
3/16: James Kirui successfully defends his thesis to become Dr. James! Congratulations.
James is the first Mehle Lab graduate. He has an excellent postdoc lined up studying HIV assembly and maturation with Eric Freed at the NIH. The whole lab is incredibly happy and proud. The Mehle Lab’s first grad student James Kirui defends his thesis today at 10am in MSB 1510.
3/16: Vy Tran rocks her talk for the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program
R-Ohhhhhhhhhhhh-1. The Mehle Lab receives a fundable score for their R01 studying regulation of the influenza virus polymerase.
The Mehle Lab and their collaborators in the Friedrich Lab and Gitter Lab received a fundable score on their R21!
February 2016
Congratulations to Vy for her internship position!
Congratulations to James for his postdoc position!
Andy publishes a Preview for Cell Host & Microbe on Wendy Barclay’s find of a host range factor for the influenza virus polymerase.
January 2016
The Mehle Lab presents their work at Viruses 2016: At the Forefront of Virus-Host Interactions.
December 2015
Members of the Mehle lab sneak off to JC Penney’s for a “family portrait” and surprise Andy with his own framed copy as a holiday gift. Hilarity ensues. Note how all of the men grew facial hair, wore glasses, and parted their hair down the middle when possible:
Mehle Lab 