Stuart Lab
Lab Team
Alicia Annamalay, PhD
Scientific project manager I
Jason Carnes, PhD
Senior research scientist IV
Dr. Jason Carnes’ research focuses on aspects of RNA biology, with a particular interest in the multiprotein complexes that perform RNA editing in the mitochondria of trypanosomes. He continues to investigate the endonucleases required for RNA editing, trying to understand how they distinguish between thousands of in vivo substrates with distinct cleavage specificities.
Heather Craig
Executive assistant
Brittney Davidge, PhD
Fellow
Ying Du
Research scientist IV
Nina Hertoghs, PhD
Fellow
Dr. Nina Hertoghs is working as a post-doctoral researcher who shares her time between the labs of Drs. Stefan Kappe and Ken Stuart. She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam, where she investigated the initial interactions between enveloped viruses like HIV-1 and Ebolavirus with mucosal dendritic cell-subsets. Here she will be involved in the HIPC2 project in which she will aim to characterize the immune responses that are elicited in several malaria-vaccine trials, and hopefully identify correlates of protection. In addition, she will utilize in vitro and ex vivo assays in order to get a more mechanistic understanding of antimalarial immunity.
Outside the lab, she enjoys discovering Seattle, especially the culinary highlights the city has to offer.
Suzanne McDermott, PhD
Research scientist IV
The kinetoplastids that include Trypanosoma and Leishmania species are responsible for serious human and animal disease in the form of Human African trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis. The main objective of Dr. Suzanne McDermott’s research is to use targeted and random mutagenesis screens, in addition to cross-linking/mass spectrometry and integrative modeling techniques, to fully understand the physical and functional interactions between proteins within the complexes responsible for RNA editing in these organisms, and the roles of these proteins and their domains and interactions during editing.