People

Dave Wynne - wynned@up.edu

Assistant Professor of Biology, University of Portland

The Wynne Lab is a "cell fusion" of two lineages of C. elegans researchers!

One of the breakthroughs that first made C. elegans an amazing system to study all kinds of biological processes was the cell lineage assembles by John Sulston and colleagues. It's a map of every single cell division (well, ok, just the somatic cells) during development (see below., or check out the lineages in detail at Wormatlas: https://www.wormatlas.org/celllineages.html)

C. elegans cell lineage (Sulston et al. 1983)

Don't forget about the Postdoc!

While worms are great and all, it's not ALWAYS about the worms. Dr. Wynne took a break from C. elegans during his postdoctoral work in Dr. Hiro Funabiki's lab at The Rockefeller University in Manhattan, which primarily uses Xenopus egg extracts to study chromosome-bound proteins.

Check out this review to know more about cool things you can do with Xenopus extracts (French and Straight 2017).

Dave Wynne's research "lineage" (Wormbase). Colors indicate that the trainee was a postdoc (green), PhD (red), or undergraduate (brown)

In an homage to the groundbreaking C. elegans cell lineage, the good folks at Wormbase made a tool where researchers using C. elegans can trace their "intellectual lineage" based on the lab(s) where they did their training, all the way back to Sydney Brenner himself. (If you're a "worm person", go try it! https://wormbase.org/resources/person/ and hit the "Lineage" link on the left side).

Dr. Wynne first started working with C. elegans as an undergraduate at Amherst College in the lab of Dr. Caroline Goutte, who is a "descendent" of the Sulston lab. Dr. Wynne then went to UC Berkeley as a graduate student where he worked in Dr. Abby Dernburg's lab, who "descends" from the germline/chromosome/meiosis lineage started by Dr. Barbara Meyer and Dr. Anne Villenuve.

Current Members (updated 1/9/26)

India Rosario '24 - Post-Baccalaureate Researcher (NIH funded)

Olivia Herning ('27)

Luke Gunnels ('27)

Riya Mathew ('27)

Olivia Gomes ('26)

Isabel Keasling ('29)

Taylor Truong ('29)

Past Members (updated 1/9/26)

If you are an alum and your info is out of date, please send some updated info!

Charlize Dela Cruz (PSU)

Sydney Liao ('27)

Josh Ramos '25

Faith Craine (Penn State Univ.)

Jodi Chen '23

Aly Axness (summer 2023)

Emily Kostyuk '24 (M.D. Candidate, OHSU)

Hannah Monti '23 (PhD program Cornelle Univ.)

Erin Slaney '23 (Test Engineer at Intuitive Surgical)

Anna Dang '25 (Biology major)

Ethan Hagmann '23 (Biology major) currently conduction neuroscience research with Dr. Angela Ozburn, OHSU/VA Portland

Madison Stanaway '22 (winner of the John Van Zytveld Award in the Life Sciences for her presentation at the 2021 Murdock College Science Research Conference, go Madison!!) - Clinical Research Assistant, Department of Nephrology, OHSU.

Isaac Reinhard '22 - Clinical Research Assistant, OHSU

Lane Witkowski '22 - TBD

Jommel Macaraeg '21 - Research Assistant, Braun Lab, Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute. *already a co-author on a paper that has been submitted from his new lab, go Jommel!!

Danielle Carmeci '21 - Gap year while applying to med schools (go Danielle!!) - taking classes, shadowing, volunteering

Ethan Jones '21 - M.D. Candidate, University of Washington

Matthew Ward '20 - Internal Medicine Resident, University of Arizona, (M.D. Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine)

Nicolai Apenes '20 - PhD candidate, University of Pennsylvania Immunology Graduate Group (IGG), former Postbaccalaureate researcher through the IRTA program at the National Institutes of Health

Amy Moore '20 - Health Aid. (winner first-place prize in the cell and molecular biology category for her poster presentation at the 2020 Oregon Academy of Science/Sigma Xi Research Symposium)

Rachael Aber '19 - PhD candidate, Dalziel Lab, Oregon State University Department of Integrative Biology

Adria Bowles '19 - M.D. Candidate, University of California, San Francisco

Katherine Brown '19 - (send me info please!)

Ryan Campbell - Business Systems Analyst II (MES) at Lonza VV (formerly Genentech)

Abigail Van Vleet '18 - Teacher, Century High School, Hillsboro, OR

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