Arnosti lab personnel

P.I. - David Arnosti
		B.A. 1978-1982 (Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin). 1982-1983 Thomas J. Watson Fellow; nuclear armament studies in Europe. 1984 Internship at Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, D.C. Ph.D. studies1984-1989 (University of California, Berkeley) with RNA polymerase pioneer Mike Chamberlin, where I studied bacterial sigma factors. Postdoc1990-1992 (University of Zurich) with Walter Schaffner, discoverer of the transcriptional enhancer; work on mechanism of activation by the Oct-2 transcription factor, and my first introduction to Drosophila technology, courtesy of Markus Noll. Postdoc1993-1996 (U. California, San Diego) with Mike Levine, who has made key contributions to our understanding of transcriptional regulation of development, including discovery of the homeobox. I know, Bill Gates looks a bit like me. No, I use a G4 Powerbook, so that's where the similarity ends.
Current Lab Members Postdoctoral Researchers
		Dr. Sandhya Payankaulam received her training in India at Bharathiar University (M.S. 1991) and the University of Madras (Ph.D. 1997) in Biochemistry. She joined the Arnosti laboratory in 2003. Sandhya has in short order become an all-round Drosophila molecular geneticist and biochemist, and is currently carrying out a biochemical analysis of cofactors of the Knirps repressor.
Visiting Assistant Professor
		Dr. Lyle Burgoon
Graduate Students
		Ahmet Ay entered the Mathematics program as a graduate student after completing his undergraduate work at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He is working with Dr. Chichia Chiu in mathematics and the Arnosti lab on studying mathematical modeling and analysis of DNA transcriptional network. Ahmet is always thinking about something like the political situation in Turkey while he cooks or his mathematical modeling while he watches Family Guy.
		Pankaj Acharya is a graduate student in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program at MSU. He comes to Michigan State from Kathmandu, Nepal where he studied microbiology as an undergraduate at Tribhuvan University. He is investigating the role of the COP9 signalosome in Retinoblastoma protein regulation. Pankaj is a vegetarian and a geography enthusiast who likes studying maps. He always enjoys going out into the hills for a good hike.
		Jacob Clifford
		Li Li received her B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China. At MSU she is a graduate student in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program. Her work in the lab is researching the mechanism of long range transcription repression of Hairy in Drosophila. In her free time Li enjoys singing karaoke and canoeing, but her favorite thing is doing chromatin immunoprecipitations.
		Rupinder Sayal completed his masters in Biotechnology at the Thapar Institute in Patiala, India. At MSU he is graduate student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program. He is working on deciphering cis-regulatory transcriptional grammar in Drosophila using biological and computational approaches. Rupinder is a big fan of music, particularly Rock and Punjabi. He is also interested in the human mind and likes to read psychology books.
		Liang Zhang
		Yang Zhang is a graduate student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. His research focuses on the functional significance of the isoforms of the transcription corepressor CtBP. Yang is interested in photography and always has his eye out for a good shot. He also likes to spend time working out at the gym.


Undergraduate Students
		Tess Jeffers
		Seuk-min Ryu
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