Lab News
BAZaR 2024
May 31, 2024
The lab joined zebrafish researchers from across the greater Boston area at BAZaR 2024 at Boston University! Thank you to the hosts and congratulations to lab member Eric Surette who was awarded Best Graduate Student Talk!
Congratulations Dr. Melody Autumn!!!
May 24, 2024
We are beyond proud of Dr. Melody Anastasia Sabrina Autumn, who successfully defended their thesis "Thyroid hormone-informed patterning and remembered positional identity direct zebrafish fin ray morphology"!
Melody's indomitable spirit, incredible scientific independence, legendary micromanipulation and epic scientific communication skills have added so much to our lab. Their most recent work on remembered positional identity of fin rays can be found here.
Bidding farewell is bittersweet and we are so excited for Melody's big move to Chicago and their next set of adventures!
Graduation!
May 21, 2024
Congratulations to the lab's 2024 graduating seniors Andrew Gans, Jenny Zeng and Elird Haxhimihali, and to Dr. Stacy Nguyen, who recieved her official doctoral hood! Lab alum Bella Ranieri joined us to watch Dr. Stacy officially get her hood.
Welcome, Nico!
May 14, 2024
The lab is extremely excited to welcome Dr. Nicolás Cumplido Salas to our group as a postdoc!
Undergraduate Research Day
May 3, 2024
Congratulations to McMenamin Lab Undrgraduates Andrew Gans, Jenny Zeng and Deirdre McKenna who presented posters at the Boston College Hamliton Symposium. Afterwards we enjoyed a Fish Lab Game Night with the Gonzalez Rosa lab to enjoy a meal, lab member Bingo and a few great card games together!
NESDB 2024
April 29, 2024
We had a wonderful time at NESDB! Rachel, Andrew, Deirdre, Eric and Melody + Jenny presented their posters and Melody gave a great flash talk on Friday. Thank you to the organizers for a great meeting and to the weather for giving us a sunny weekend in Woods Hole!
Transplant preprint
Mar 31, 2024
Melody's ray transplant paper is now available on BioRxiv!
Read about how distal portions of fin rays can regenerate in proximal locations, and remember components of their original identity.
Welcome, John!
January 23, 2024
The McMenamin Lab is delighted to welcome new PhD student John Gabelmann!
SCZI meeting
Jan 9, 2024
Sarah traveled to present the lab's work at the 10th Strategic Conference of Zebrafish Investigators in beautiful Monterey CA. Sarah and new Boston College faculty member Juanma González-Rosa took some time after talks to enjoy the Asilomar beach sunset!
Congratulations, Dr. Stacy Nguyen!!!
August 10, 2023
Stacy Nguyen successfully defended her PhD thesis "Roles of thyroid hormone in postembryonic craniofacial development and zebrafish and other Danioninae"! We celebrated with the Biology Department, Stacy's friends and family and members of the Lab, including 5 Lab alumni who traveled to attend her talk.
Stacy has been a central, guiding force in the lab since the very beginning and has spearheaded beautiful work analyzing the emergence of skull shape in three dimensions. Her latest preprint about craniofacial diversity across close relatives of the zebrafish can be found here! Stacy is starting a faculty position at Wheaton College and they are unbelievably lucky to have her.
Our hearts ache to say goodbye, and we are so excited about about Stacy's next adventure!!
Paper published in PNAS
May 15 2023
Our lab's paper Thyroid homone regulates proximodistal patterning in fin rays is now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! Congratulations to Melody, Yinan and everyone whose hard work made this publication possible!
BAZaR 2023 at Boston College
March 18 2023
We hosted the inaugural meeting of BAZaR: Boston Area Zebrafish Researchers. We had 90+ attendees from 18 institutions from across the greater Boston area. Sarah organized the meeting along with colleagues Jenna Galloway and Trista North.
Congratulations to McMenamin Lab grad student Eric Surette on a great talk and to undergrad Stephanie Robinson on winning Best Undergraduate Poster!
Tenure!
March 1 2023
We received news this week that Sarah was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure!
We've been celebrating with cake, sushi, and more balloons that is really reasonable to have at a lab meeting.