News

2024.07. Announcement: The Mao lab is moving to New York in August 2024. Peng will serve as Associate Professor at Stony Brook University Cancer Center. While we are excited about the new chapter, we are extremely thankful for the opportunity at UNM for us to grow. Let's go, Lobos!

2024.06. Dr. Peng Mao is promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at UNM School of Medicine. We are grateful for this great honor and look forward to more exciting discoveries in our research!

2024. 04. We published a review, entitled "Cisplatin in the era of PARP inhibitors and immunotherapy", in Pharmacology & Therapeutics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163725824000627

2024.03. Ally's F31 application received a strong score in her FIRST try. Big congratulations!

2024. 01. Mingrui and Po-Hsuen's paper was published in PNAS. The paper describes frequent melanoma mutation hotspots at the binding sites of ETS (E26 transformation-specific) transcription factors. We determined that the ETS-associated mutations are caused by exceptionally high UV damage formation and low DNA repair rate. This study is collaborated with Drs. Yi He (UNM Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology), Ke Jian ‘Jim’ Liu (Stony Brook University), and Raluca Gordân (Duke University). Link: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310854121

2023.09. Peng and Ally attended 2023 EMGS Annual Meeting in Chicago and gave talks. We appreciate this great opportunity to meet with collegues in the DNA repair and mutagenesis field. 

2023.08. Ally's review paper, entitled "The Role of TFIIH Complex in Nucleotide Excision Repair", is published in Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis. 

2023.07. Ally received a travel award from the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS) to attend the annual meeting in Chicago. Congrats!

2023.07. We received an R21 subaward from collaboration with Dr. John Wyrick (WSU). We will work together to understand mutation mechanisms at transcription factor binding sites in melanoma. 

2023.06. The lab received an R01 subaward from collaboration with Dr. A. Hunter Shain (UCSF). We are grateful for this collaboration to investigate mutations in melanocytes. 

2023.06. The lab received the first R01 grant from NCI. 

2023.04. Peng attended American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting and chaired the session entitled "DNA Damage and Therapeutic Strategies".  

2023.03. Our collaboration with Dr. John Wyrick (Washington State University) has led to a new paper published in PNAS (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2216907120). The new study focuses on genome-wide mapping of atypical UV lesions such as 6-4PPs and TA photoproducts. 

2022.12. Ally received a graduate student matching fund ($25,000 for one year) from UNM Cancer Center to support her research. 

2022.10. The lab attended UNM Cancer Center Research Day. Ally presented her research on XPD mutations and UV damage repair and won a $250 poster presentation award.  Congratulations!

2022.10. Our collaboration with Dr. John Wyrick (PI) at Washington State University received a strong score of an R21 grant. 

2022.10. The lab received an excellent score of an R01 application. This is our first R01 grant. We will investigate the genome-wide mechanism of transcription-coupled DNA repair in human cells.  

2022.10. Ally received a travel award from the Cancer Biology Annual Retreat and presented her research on the role of XPD in UV damage repair in San Antonio, Texas. 

2022.08. Peng attended the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS)  in Ottawa, Canada and presented our work on DNA repair of alkylation lesions. 

2022.07. Po-Husen Lee joins the lab as a senior research scientist. 

2022.06. The lab collaborated with Dr. A. Hunter Shain (UCSF) lab and received a strong score in Dr. Shain's R01 application. We will use CPD-seq to study UV damage repair and it contribution to somatic mutations in melanocytes.  

2022.06. Ally Hoag joins the lab as the first graduate student. 

2022.05. Peng attended the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS) DNA Repair SIG meeting and gave a talk. 

2022.03. New publication. We collaborated with John Wyrick lab at Washington State University and Gregory Poon at Georgia State University and identified regulation of alkylation damage and base excision repair at yeast transcription factor binding sites. This study is accpeted by eLife! 

2021.11. Dr. Mao gave a seminar to the Department of Environmental Health Science of University of Georgia. 

2021.10. Dr. Mao was invited by Dr. Bret Freudenthal to give a seminar to the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Kansas Medical Center, 

2021.06. Jasmine Meltzer from Clemson University joins the lab as a summer student. She will work on an alkylation damage repair project in yeast.

2021.05. Our collaborative work with Dr. John Wyrick's lab is publised in Genome Research. Check it out: "Distinct roles for RSC and SWI/SNF chromatin remodelers in genomic excision repair".

2021.04. We worked with Dr. Jim Liu's lab and published a review in DNA Repair to summarize new findings in transcription-coupled DNA repair pathway. Link: Transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair: New insights revealed by genomic approaches

2021.03. Our manuscript is published in Nature Protocols. We collaborated with Dr. Yan Guo, director of Bioinformatics Shared Resources for the New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center, and developed a bioinformatics tool for CPD-seq data analyisis. Link:A streamlined solution for processing, elucidating and quality control of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer sequencing data

2020.12. Our manuscript entitled "Role of Nucleotide Excision Repair in Cisplatin Resistance" is published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS). Link: Role of Nucleotide Excision Repair in Cisplatin Resistance

2020.12. The Mao lab is awarded a pilot grant from the University of New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine supported by NIGMS/NIH (P20GM130422). This pilot project will study the effect of environmental arsenic on UV damage repair and skin cancer. 

2020.10. Check out a recent UNM report about our DNA repair research. https://hsc.unm.edu/news/2020/10/molecular-shape-shifters.html

2020.08. PNAS published a commentary by Dr. Dong Wang at UCSD to introduce our recent work. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/35/20991.short

2020.08. The Mao lab is accepting graduate students. Contact Dr. Mao (PMao@salud.unm.edu) for rotation opportunities.

2020.07. Our manuscript is accepted by PNAS! In this study, we investigated how cells rescue DNA damage-arrested RNA polymerase through transcription-coupled repair. Dr. Mingrui Duan in the Mao lab is the lead author of this study. Link: Genome-wide role of Rad26 in promoting transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair in yeast chromatin

2020.06. The Mao lab has received an R21 grant from NIH to study DNA repair of alkylation DNA damage.

2019.12. Our manuscript is accepted by Genome Research! We used genome-wide DNA repair and melanoma mutation data to analyze how nucleosomes, building blocks of chromatin, affect DNA repair and mutagenesis. Our whole-genome data revealed asymmetric repair and mutation distribution in nucleosomes! Link: Asymmetric repair of UV damage in nucleosomes imposes a DNA strand polarity on somatic mutations in skin cancer

2019. 10. Jenna Ulibarri joins the Mao lab as a Research Technician.

2019.08. The Mao Lab officially started from August 1, 2019. Goodbye, Pullman, WA. Hello, Albuquerque, NM!