Recent News:

December 19, 2011
Genome Biology published our collaborative paper showing that Blm mutants have increased frequencies of genome rearrangements and tumorigenesis. Interestingly, these increases don't require DNA ligase IV, providing more evidence that alternative end joining may correlate with cancer development and/or progression.

December 13, 2011
Kelly emerged from her thesis proposal defense with all limbs intact. She has now proven to her committee that she has something to do in graduate school. Last part of the 3-step program to graduate school success: actually doing it!

September 1, 2011
The lab got its first R01 grant today from NIGMS. This grant will fund our studies of proteins involved in error-prone repair of DNA double-strand breaks and how the resulting mutations can lead to tumorigenesis in flies.

April 28, 2011
Amy Baker gave a rousing defense of her senior honors thesis today. Next stop for Amy junior? A Ph.D. program at Dartmouth. We'll certainly miss her talking muffin jokes... good luck Amy!

March 21, 2011
Introducing....Dr. Amy Yu! Amy successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis today. For an encore presentation, Amy will be staying on the Red Line, moving to Leona Samson's lab at MIT for a postdoctoral fellowship beginning this summer.

Less Recent News:

December 3, 2010
Dan received a DeLill Nasser Career Development Award from the Genetics Society of America. He's already agreed not to use the award to support his "one-flug-a-day" habit, for which he is currently receiving treatment.

September 24, 2010
A big day in the lab! We just learned that the American Cancer Society will fund our investigations into the mechanisms by which error-prone polymerases promote DNA double-strand break repair. Thanks to everyone who has ever participated in a fundraising event for the ACS.

May 11, 2010
Bena and Amy's paper describing several important roles of translesion DNA polymerase theta in alternative end joining was accepted to PLoS Genetics today. This fascinating protein appears to be central to many types of DNA repair in fruit flies--now comes the challenge of figuring out exactly what it's doing! Read the press release that accompanied the article.

April 30, 2010
Michael defended his senior honors thesis titled "Characterization of the role of Drosophila melanogaster Pol32 in homologous recombination and DNA repair." Of course, Darwin, the lab mascot/demigod, was in attendance as he received highest thesis honors.

April 27, 2010
Amy's paper proposing a new model for alternative end joining was accepted today at Nucleic Acids Research. The model, aptly named "SD-MMEJ" (for synthesis-dependent microhomology-mediated end joining), postulates that local DNA sequence context flanking a break site may play a crucial role in the repair process. Feedback on this model is most certainly welcome.

March 28 , 2010
Carrie Hui was named a 2010 Summer Scholar and will use her award to further her studies on the mysterious Trf4 proteins in Drosophila.

March 4, 2010
It's official: Adam is now a Ph.D. candidate, after successfully defending his thesis research proposal today. No backing out now...

March 1, 2010
More props for the undergrads: Amy Baker was named this year's Biology department recipient of the Paula Frazier Poskitt Scholarship, which will support her as she works on her Senior Honors Thesis project. Michael won the Class of 1898 Prize, which recognizes his high scholarly ability.

January 4, 2010
How many ways are there to repair an interstrand crosslink? What can slime molds tell us about this type of repair? For answers to these questions and more, check out a review by Mitch published in a special crosslink repair issue of Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.

August 17, 2009
Alice and Dan's paper describing the use of DmBlm mutants in imprecise transposon excision screens was accepted at Genetics. Because one of the Minos transposons that Alice excised was located in a gene named Tequila, the possibilities for celebratory activities were pretty obvious. The work will also be highlighted in the April 2010 edition of Fly.

May 5, 2009
Bena defended her senior honors thesis titled "Involvement of DNA polymerase theta in alternative end-joining repair of DNA double-strand breaks in Drosophila melanogaster." She knew things were going well when her committee members started excitedly discussing models halfway through the presentation. Highest honors to Bena!

May 1, 2009
Dan was presented with an award from the Tufts Graduate Student Council for his outstanding achievements to undergraduate education. He's currently building a new trophy case for his growing collection.

April 29, 2009
Adam Thomas switched to the Ph.D. program, in spite of the multiple Ph.D. comic strips that Mitch posted around the lab. Welcome to the dark side, Adam.

April 3, 2009
Amy Baker was named a 2009 Summer Scholar and will delve into the mysteries of alternative end joining, together with Amy Yu, this summer. Perhaps we'll start calling them the 'A team?'

March 25, 2009
Amy Yu received a travel scholarship from the American Society for Microbiology to present her research at the 3rd ASM conference on DNA Repair and Mutagenesis in Whistler, Canada. Thanks to the ASM for supporting international collaboration!

March 15, 2009
Bena has been accepted to the Biology graduate program at M.I.T., where she will continue her studies next fall. This means that she'll still be able to attend the lab parties once she graduates. Congrats, Bena!

December 16, 2008
Two big events today. Amy Yu was awarded a travel scholarship from the Keystone Symposia to present her research on alternative end joining repair of DNA double-strand breaks in Drosophila. You can hear about her research in Taos, New Mexico at the Genome Instability and DNA repair conference. Also today, Dan successfully defended his thesis research proposal, ensuring many more happy days with the flies.

November 5, 2008
Karina presented the results from her REU summer program research at the 2008 ABRCMS conference in Orlando today. Her reward involved visits to several Orlando tourist attractions.

September 21, 2008
Want to know more about alternative end joining repair of DNA double-strand breaks? Check out a review about microhomology-mediated end joining that Mitch co-authored with Sang Eun Lee, published today in Trends in Genetics.

April 30, 2008
Camille successfully defended her senior honors thesis titled "The role of ligase III in DNA double-strand break repair in Drosophila melanogaster" and received high honors. She will soon be relocating to the other coast to take a position in Ophir Klein's lab at UCSF. Congrats, Camille!

April 25, 2008
More honors: Bena was awarded the R.M. Karapetoff Cobb Chemistry Fund Prize and the Thomas Harrison & Emily Leonard Carmichael Prize Scholarship, both of which recognize significant academic achievement.

April 3, 2008
Two lab members received honors today. Dan received Honorable Mention for his NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application. Bena was named a 2008 Tufts Summer Scholar and will use her award this summer to conduct research for her senior thesis. Kudos to both Bena and Dan!

February 26, 2008
Amy successfully defended her thesis research proposal today, making her an official Ph.D. candidate. Onward to the thesis!

February 13, 2008
Amy and Dan presented results of their research at the Keystone Conference on DNA Replication and Recombination. Dan took many thought-provoking questions after his talk, and Amy endured a 3 hour marathon poster session.

January 25, 2008
Alice, Dan, and Adam won first and second prize in Kimtech's "Love That Glove" video contest . Their masterpieces can be viewed here ("Looking for Love in a Glove" and "Training the New Guy"). We're still waiting for the Golden Globe nominations...

November 10, 2007
Camille won a prize for her ABRCMS poster titled "The role of ligase III in DNA double-strand break repair in Drosophila." Unfortunately, she and Endry were unable to find a mechanical bull for their post-conference celebration.

September 28, 2007
Camille and Endry received travel awards to present their research at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in November in Austin. Onward to the Longhorn State!

July 30, 2007
The major research projects in the lab are now funded by a National Science Foundation's CAREER award. The grant supports investigations into the "Interactions Between Error-Prone and Error-Free DNA Double-Strand Break Repair Pathways in Drosophila Melanogaster."

April 6, 2007
The McVey lab First Distinguished Quote Hunt was held. All quotes were accounted for (together with lots of candy).

October 27, 2006
Amy was awarded a Graduate Student Research Award for her project, "Effect of DNA ligase 4 on cell death after chromosome breakage."

September 10, 2006
Adam got married today! The biology department celebrated his union by decorating his lab bench. He's decided to keep the decorations for good experimental karma (see picture).

July 1, 2006
The lab received its first outside grant today. The Ellison Medical Foundation has awarded us a New Scholar in Aging grant to study the prevalence and mechanisms of error-prone end-joining repair in Drosophila as they age.