Juan Rodríguez Molina, PhD

Principal Investigator

Juan is interested in the fundamental mechanisms of RNA polymerase II transcription and RNA processing. He uses structural biology, biochemistry, and chemical genomics to explore mechanisms of transcription regulation and their relevance in health and disease.

Juan studied Industrial Biotechology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, and then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to complete a PhD in Biochemistry in the lab of Dr Aseem Ansari. There he studied how phosphorylation of the C-terminal domain of RNA Polymerase II regulate transcription. He then completed a postdoc in the lab of Dr Lori Passmore at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology where he studied the biochemistry and structural biology of mRNA 3'-end processing. He then spent a year in the lab of Dr Radoslav Enchev at the Francis Crick Institute using time-resolved cryoEM to capture low-affinity interactions between Cullin E3 Ubiquitin ligases and neo-substrates.

Hobbies: rowing and watching movies

CV

Zhenyu Yuan, PhD

Research Scientist

Maddie Mousseau, PhD

Postdoc

My research interests are cryogenic electron microscopy and solving incredible 3D structures of macromolecules. I hope to pursue a career where I can spend all day preparing cryo-EM grids and visualize different structures.

Madeline decided to pursue a career in chemistry after taking general chemistry in her junior year of high school. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she received a B.A. in chemistry. She then went on to pursue a master's in chemistry at the University of Colorado, Denver. There she discovered her love for RNA research and was determined to pursue a Ph.D.. She continued her education at the University of Notre Dame, where she earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry. Madeline's thesis research focused on RNA triple helices and their binding partners via biochemical and structural characterization.

My hobbies include movies, musical theater, and I am a avid corgi fan and hope to have a corgi one day named Rigatoni.

Jillian Becksfort

PhD Student

I am interested in studying proteins that modulate transcription. I am looking to characterize termination factors and capture their interactions with RNA Polymerase 2 using structural techniques such as Cryo-EM.

Jill received her undergraduate degree (Biology, B.S.) from Olivet Nazarene University. Jillian worked as a TA for 3 years, assisting with courses such as Biology, Genetics, Cancer Biology, Microbiology, and others. Jillian’s undergraduate research was in the field of ecology and focused on the effects of prairie fires on plant growth and plant species distribution. During her time as a TA she fell in love with transcription and switched fields from ecology to Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry.

Outside the lab, Jillian likes to spend her time on the pottery wheel. She also enjoys collecting carnivorous plants and caring for her colony of small freshwater shrimp.

Mary Hunter

SURF MedEx Scholar