Lab Members

Kavi Rangan, PhD

Principal Investigator,

Assiant Professor, Department of Biology.

Education

PhD Rockefeller University, 2015. Advisor: Howard Hang

B.S. in Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley 2007

Postdoctoral Work:

UC San Diego

Advisor: Sam Reck-Peterson

The Marine Biological Laboratory

Advisor: Josh Rosenthal

Publications

Rangan, K.J.* and Reck-Peterson S.L.* RNA recoding in cephalopods tailors microtubule motor protein function. Cell 2023; 186 (12), 2531 - 2543.e11 * Co-corresponding authors

Vallecillo-Viejo I.C., Liscovitch-Brauer N., Quiroz J.F.D., Montiel-Gonzalez M.F., Nemes S.E., Rangan K.J., Levinson S.R., Eisenberg E., Rosenthal J.J.C. Spatially regulated editing of genetic information within a neuron. Nucleic Acids Research 2020; 48 (8), 3999-4012

Kim B., Wang Y-C., Hespen C.W., Espinosa J., Salje J., Rangan K.J., Oren D.A., Kang J.Y., Pedicord V.A., Hang H.C. Enterococcus faecium secreted antigen A generates muropeptides to activate immune signaling and limit bacterial pathogenesis. eLife 2019; 8:e45343

Rangan K.J., Hang H.C. Biochemical mechanisms of pathogen restriction by intestinal bacteria. Trends in Biochemical Sciences 2017 Nov; 42(11), 887-898.

Rangan K.J.*, Pedicord V.A., Wang Y-C., Kim B., Lu Y., Shaham S., Mucida D., Hang H.C*. A secreted bacterial peptidoglycan hydrolase enhances tolerance to enteric pathogens. Science 2016; 353 (6306), 1434-1437. * Co-corresponding authors

Pedicord V.A., Lockhart A.A.K., Rangan K.J., Craig J.W., Loschko J., Rogoz A., Hang H.C., Mucida D. Exploiting a host-commensal interaction to promote intestinal barrier function and enteric pathogen tolerance. Science Immunology 2016; 1 (3), eaai7732.

Rangan K.J., Yang Y.Y., Charron G., Hang H.C. Rapid visualization and large-scale profiling of bacterial lipoproteins with chemical reporters. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2010;132 (31), 10628-10629.

Donovan Ventimglia, PhD

Co-PI

Education

PhD Rockefeller University 2017. Advisor: Cori Bargmann

B.A. in Neurobiology, UCSB 2009

Postdoctoral Work

Salk Institute

Advisor: Kenta Asahina

The Marine Biological Laboratory

Advisor: Roger Hanlon

Publications

Ventimiglia D*, Elizabeth Chamiec-Case1,2, Claire S. Lee, Bruce Ruff, Kenta Asahina*. Neural implementation of evolutionary game theory regulates social dominance. (In review, Nature Neuroscience). *Co-corresponding

Li L, Liu H, Krout M, Richmond JE, Wang Y, Bai J, Weeratunga S, Collins BM, Ventimiglia D, Yu Y, Xia J, Tang J, Liu J, Hu Z. A novel dual Ca2+ sensor system regulates Ca2+-dependent neurotransmitter release. J Cell Biology (2021).

Ventimiglia, D., and Bargmann, C.I. Diverse modes of synaptic signaling, regulation, and plasticity distinguish two classes of C. elegans glutamatergic neurons. Elife (2017).

J. Larsch, D. Ventimiglia, C.I. Bargmann, & D. Albrecht. High-throughput imaging of neuronal activity in Caenorhabditis elegans. PNAS (2013).

E. Kiris, D. Ventimiglia, M. R. Gaylord, M.E. Sargin, A. Altinok, K. Rose, B.S. Manjunath, M.A. Jordan, L. Wilson and S.C. Feinstein. Combinatorial Tau Pseudophosphorylation: markedly different regulatory effects on microtubule assembly and dynamic instability than the sum of the individual parts. Journal of Biological Chemistry (2011).

E. Kiris, D. Ventimiglia, S.C. Feinstein. Quantitative analysis of MAP-mediated regulation of microtubule dynamic instability in vitro focus on tau. Methods Cell Biology (2010).

M.C.Choi, U. Raviv, H. Miller, M.R. Gaylord, E. Kiris, D. Ventimiglia, D. Needleman, M.W. Kim, L. Wilson, S. Feinstein, C.R. Safinya. Human Microtubule-Associated-Protein Tau Regulates the Number of Protofilaments in Microtubules: A Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Study. Biophysical Journal (2009).

Rashad Batley

PhD Student

Education

B.S. in Biology, Umass Amherst 2022

Contact Information

Publications

Taku Harada, Monika Perez, Jeremie Kalfon, Rashad Batley, Flora Dievenich Braes, Stuart H Orkin, Maxim Pimkin; Rapid-Kinetics Degron Benchmarking Reveals Off-Target Activities and Mixed Agonism-Antagonism of MYB Inhibitors. Blood 2023; 142 (Supplement 1): 3638. doi: https://doi.org/10.1182/blood-2023-186841

Harada T, Kalfon J, Perez MW, Eagle K, Braes FD, Batley R, Heshmati Y, Ferrucio JX, Ewers J, Mehta S, Kossenkov A, Ellegast JM, Bowker A, Wickramasinghe J, Nabet B, Paralkar VR, Dharia NV, Stegmaier K, Orkin SH, Pimkin M. Leukemia core transcriptional circuitry is a sparsely interconnected hierarchy stabilized by incoherent feed-forward loops. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023 Mar 15:2023.03.13.532438. doi: 10.1101/2023.03.13.532438. PMID: 36993171; PMCID: PMC10054969.

Sara Seegers

PhD Student

Education

M.S. in Biology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 2019

B.S. in Biology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 2017

Publications

Seegers SL, Frasier C, Greene S, Nesmelova IV, Grdzelishvili VZ. Experimental Evolution Generates Novel Oncolytic Vesicular Stomatitis Viruses with Improved Replication in Virus-Resistant Pancreatic Cancer Cells. J Virol. 2020 Jan 17;94(3):e01643-19. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01643-19. PMID: 31694943; PMCID: PMC7000975.

Mani R, Benrashid S, Templeton MD, Druhan LJ, Seegers SL, Chakraborty S, Teague SE, Jaros SC, Yang HT, Foureau DM, Steuerwald NM, Pal D, Ghosh N, Copelan EA, Durden DL, Avalos BR, Park SI. TP53 upregulation via aurora kinase inhibition overcomes primary failure to venetoclax in BCL2-rearranged lymphomas. iScience. 2025 May 2;28(6):112584. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112584. PMID: 40491476; PMCID: PMC12146551.

Lance A, Chiad Z, Seegers SL, Paschall SC, Drummond K, Steuerwald NM, Yang HT, Chen J, Voorhees PM, Avalos BR, Druhan LJ. Hereditary chronic neutrophilic leukemia in a four-generation family without transformation to acute leukemia. Am J Hematol. 2024 Oct;99(10):1877-1886. doi: 10.1002/ajh.27420. Epub 2024 Jun 27. PMID: 38934467.

James Marvel-Coen

Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

Ph.D. Harvard University 2025 Advisor: Josh Kaplan

M.A. Comparative Human Development University of Chicago 2017

B.A. in Biology and English Williams College 2015

Publications

J. Marvel-Coen, E. Ardiel, J. Zhao, S. Nurrish, J. Kaplan (2026). Immature C. elegans motor neurons control embryo behavior via both synaptic and non-synaptic GABA release. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (2) e2508541123. DOI:10.1073/pnas.2508541123

S. Carreiro, J. Marvel-Coen, R. Lee, B. Chapman, V. Ambros (2020). Circulating miRNA Profiles in Acetaminophen Toxicity. J. Med Toxicol. 16(2):177-187. DOI: 10.1007/s13181-019-00739-6

J. Marvel-Coen, N. Nickels, D. Maestripieri (2018). The relationship between morningness-eveningness, psychosocial variables, and cortisol reactivity to stress from a life history perspective. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences 12(2):71-86. DOI: 10.1037/ebs0000113

D. Maestripieri, J. Marvel-Coen. Human nature and human universals. In: The Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences (ed. by V. Zeigler-Hill & T. Shackelford), Berlin: Springer, 2018.

J. Marvel-Coen, C. Scrivner, D. Maestripieri. Morningness-eveningness and socio-sexuality from a life history perspective. In: The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences (ed. by V. Zeigler-Hill & T. Shackelford.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2018.

J. Marvel-Coen (2017). Digest: Finding new homes: multilevel selection on birth timing and growth in North American red squirrels. Evolution 71(7): 1917-1918. DOI: 10.1111/evo.1329