August 2024:
After a successful year-long internship in the lab, we had to say Auf wiedersehen to medical student Carolin Aurich (second from right), who is returning to Germany to finish her degree.
October 2023:
The Heyer lab was awarded the Laboratory Safety Award for the College of Biological Sciences! A big thanks to our lab manager, Rita Alexeeva, and to all the members of our group for their diligence.
May 2023:
Our lab was recently featured in a Nature Methods Lab & Life article by Vivien Marx on spoken languages in the lab! Read the article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-023-01854-7, and see our lab’s Bonus page to learn more: https://heyerlab.ucdavis.edu/bonus/languages-spoken-in-the-lab. Also check out the associated podcast: https://cellmolbiocommunity.springernature.com/posts/podcast-lab-languages.
May 2022:
PI Wolf-Dietrich Heyer received the Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Scholar Mentorship Award. He was nominated with the support of numerous current and former students, postdocs, and colleagues.
May 2018:
Great news! Undergraduate student Ben Mallory wins the Baskin Prize for Undergraduate Research. Read the story here: https://biology.ucdavis.edu/news/passion-research-leads-baskin-award-for-benjamin-mallory
August 2017:
Yeepeeya! The big splash of Aurèle and Will “Multi-invasions Are Recombination Byproducts that Induce Chromosomal Rearrangements” is out in Cell!
April 2017:
Spring lab hike amidst flowers, cows and waterfalls! The Heyer federation of Molkky is moving to league 1! Check out the pictures.
October 2016:
Soccer game against the K lab. Guess who won?
June 2016:
This year’s lab hike (the 27th) took place in Spring, just after finals, to see the flow of the superb Feather Falls and swim in the Oroville Lake. Check out the pictures here!
May 2016:
Publication of “Nek1 Regulates Rad54 to Orchestrate Homologous Recombination and Replication Fork Stability“, a beautiful paper in Molecular Cell about the role and regulation of recombination proteins to ensure replication fork stability by the Löbrich group on which Will performed the in vitro part. [PDF]
March 2016:
Congrats to Ryan, long-gone now, for his last story about a fantastic EMAP screen he conducted, which led to the identification of a role of the non-sense mediated RNA decay in regulating DNA repair by homologous recombination upon DNA damage. It is finally out in NAR: Nonsense-mediated decay regulates key components of homologous recombination. (Open access)
January-March 2016:
It’s a tsunami of new faces: two new post-docs (Xiaoyan Ma and Hang Phuong Le) and a new grad student (Shanaya Shah) just joined the lab! Welcome!!
December 2015:
The program for “MIC276: Advanced concepts in DNA metabolism” (Winter quarter 2016) is out!
November 2015:
Congrats to Damon and Becky for their paper “DNA polymerases δ and λ cooperate in repairing double-strand breaks by microhomology-mediated end-joining in Saccharomyces cerevisiae“, just published in PNAS! [PDF]
October 2015:
Late time for a lab hike (26th!), but not cooler time. See us sweating on the sometimes steep slopes of the Skyline trail in the Napa Skyline Wilderness Park, a small section of the Bay Ridge Trail.
August 2015:
- The MIC275 Seminar series on DNA Repair and Recombination will re-start for the Fall quarter! Check out the speakers and students register here.
- Paula’ postdoctoral (Science without Borders Brazilian) Fellowship has been extended for an extra year, yeepee!
- The updated overview of recombination regulation and genomic maintenance by Wolf as part of the Cold Spring Harbor review series on DNA repair is now available online! [PDF]
February 2015:
Clare’s masterpiece is out!
Top3-rmi1 dissolve rad51-mediated d loops by a topoisomerase-based mechanism. Fasching CL, Cejka P, Kowalczykowski SC, Heyer WD. Mol Cell. 2015 Feb 19;57(4):595-606. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2015.01.022. [PDF]
December 2014:
Check the GoT version of the lab here!
April 2014:
New publication! Congrats to Rinti, Will and Kirk for their terrific new paper, in press in NAR “The Mus81-Mms4 structure-selective endonuclease requires nicked DNA junctions to undergo conformational changes and bends its DNA substrates for cleavage”
February 2014:
Will just released his masterpiece in Molecular Cell: Rad54 functions as a Heteroduplex DNA Pump Modulated by Its DNA Substrates and Rad51 during D-loop Formation. Mol Cell. 2014 Feb 6;53(3):420-32. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2013.12.027.