December 22, 2022 – Christmas presents arrived early for the lab! We now have the ability to resolve different fluorophores based on their fluorescence lifetimes, which allow us to simultaneously image up to 8 fluorescent proteins. Our new FLIM capabilities also allow us to assess changes in protein-protein interactions in live cells using Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET).

September 9, 2022 – Happy one year anniversary to Josh, our energetic postdoc! We celebrated with our first joint lab happy hour with the fun Benham-Pyle team!! Some good chatter over cocktails, beer, and tasty appetizers!

August 31, 2022 – We got to celebrate Paola’s birthday over korean BBQ and soju! Paola has been a bright presence in the lab for her first few months here. She has made such a positive and immediate impact to the group!

June 1, 2022 – We’re excited to have Paola and Noah join the team! Paola just graduated from the University of Oklahoma and is joining us as a research technician. She will be searching for factors that regulate contact sites between the ER and P-bodies. Noah is joining us as the first graduate student of the lab. He will be investigating mechanisms regulating the crosstalk between mRNA translation and mRNA silencing at the ER-condensate interface.

January 13, 2022 – Ana Garcia-Saez and team published a beautiful story showing physical interactions between Bax and Drp1 on mitochondrial membranes during apoptosis. This interaction plays a critical role in mediating the release of cytochrome C into the cytoplasm to potentiate the cell death cascade. Jason’s development of the dimerization dependent fluorescent biosensors (ddFBs) to resolve endoplasmic reticulum and processing (P)-body contact sites overlapped with Raquel Salvador-Gallego’s (Ana’s PhD student) time in the Voeltz Lab. Our collaboration fostered the use of ddFBs in the spatiotemporal resolution of Bax and Drp1 interactions on mitochondrial membranes upon the initiation of cell death. Check it out at EMBOJ!

January 1, 2022 – Happy New Year and great news! Joshua Marcus, Ph.D. gave an excellent presentation of his preliminary studies in the J. Lee Lab and was selected to a one year appointment with The Precision Environmental Health Sciences (TPEHS) T32 Fellowship Program with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Joshua will be studying the effects of environmental stress on cytoplasmic organization with a focus on interactions between the endoplasmic reticulum and stress granules.

December 15, 2021 – Jason combined work and play to drive the lab’s 85! samples to our collaborator in San Diego. There, he met his partner and daughter to spend several days at the beach to celebrate their daughter’s 3rd birthday. Pictured is moonset (City of Rocks State Park, New Mexico), which was captured on his solo drive back to Houston.

December 17, 2021 – We celebrated a fun and productive 2021 with our first lab holiday party! Steaks, salmon, roasted veggies, mushroom risotto and carrot cake filled our bellies. It was great to hear everyone’s stories and to see that the lab chemistry experiment has successful beginnings. Here’s to more growth in 2022!

September 8, 2021 – Andrea and Joshua are two postdocs that joined this summer after recently completing their Ph.D. work at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Alabama, Birmingham, respectively. Learn more about Andrea and Josh here.

February 23, 2021 – Our lab is pleased to welcome Jue “Jeremy” Wang! Currently, Jue is a Rice undergraduate student studying biology and asian studies. Jue has cell biology experience from James McNew’s Lab at Rice University where he was conducting experiments on atlastins, a family of proteins that shape the endoplasmic reticulum network. We are excited to have Jue join us for the Spring semester!