Fall 2014: Projects and people

Projects and people in the Wilson Sayres lab in Fall 2014. At the end of Spring 2015 we will check back in with all of our accomplishments, what we learned, and where we'll be heading.

Projects are listed alphabetically. Project members are listed first in ascending order of reported year in school, then alphabetically by last name. 

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All the projects
Principal Investigator: Dr. Melissa Wilson Sayres

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Comparative Fertility 

Investigating the evolution of genes involved in fertility.

Undergraduate: Brittany Hammis (freshman)

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Lepidoptera life history and simulations
Investigating variations in genome evolution and life history, and investigating the effects of demographic history on estimates of mutation rates.

Undergraduate: Christopher Negrich (freshman)

Undergraduate: Samantha Daly (sophomore)

Undergraduate: Ashley Amidan  (junior)

Undergraduate: Melinda Jenner  (senior)

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Mammary tissue evolution - Joint with Cartwright Lab

Investigating the evolution of pre-pregnancy mammary tissue development in humans.

Undergraduate: Caroline Erickson (sophomore) – Joint with Cartwright Lab

Undergraduate: Jaclyn Williams  (junior)

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Proteome Evolution

Investigating positive selection in tissue-specific proteomes.

Undergraduate: David Barclay (junior)

Undergraduate: William Martelly (junior)

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Pseudoautosomal region diversity

Investigating diversity in the pseudoautosomal region of the sex chromosomes.

Undergraduate: Danny Cotter (freshman)

Undergraduate: Sarah Brotman (sophomore)

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Squamate sex determination

Investigating sex determination mechanisms and sex chromosome evolution in squamates.

Undergraduate: Shawn Rupp (junior)

Undergraduate: Hien Vu (junior)

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Turner syndrome

Investigating parent-of-origin effects for the single X chromosome in people with Turner syndrome.

Undergraduate: Jada Wang (freshman)

Undergraduate: Marshall Styers (freshman)

Undergraduate: Kara Schaffer (junior)

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X-Y recombination

Investigating the timing of X-Y recombination suppression.

Undergraduate: Alix Marinello (freshman)

Undergraduate: Reena Ygot (senior)

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Advice from tenured professors for pre-tenure faculty

I recently attended a workshop put on by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University where six tenured professors gave advice for pre-tenure faculty. Here are my notes from the workshop:

There is no free lunch.
When you've arrived on campus and someone invites you out to lunch, keep your antenna up as to why  they invited you out.

• Don't commit to anything at lunch, give yourself time to consider it.
• Stay out of departmental politics.
• Avoid the perception that you've joined a faction (e.g., routinely going to lunch with a prominent member of a faction).
• Seek advice from people within your department (they are familiar with your specific department, but may give you biased advice about specific situations).
• Also seek advice from ppl outside your University (they aren't familiar with your specific department, but they can give unbiased advice about general situations).
• Your job is to get your work done. You can always use your work as an excuse to avoid politics. 

Find balance.

• Don't shut yourself down at your desk.
• Learn to say "no" constructively (e.g., I cannot commit to X, but I could do Y; or, I'm interested, but already committed to Z.).

Be a good colleague/academic citizen.

• Serve on student committees.
• Serve on committee for department fellowships.
• Important to be visible. You want your colleagues to know you and be invested in thou.
• When it comes to collaborations, seek out people in your unit first before other units on campus (pre-tenure).
• Scholarly presence in research *AND* physical presence.
• Look past your own CV
• At faculty meetings, if you have an opinion, share it; it is the best way for colleagues to get to know you.

Research and Teaching first, but Service is still important.

• Service to the department *AND* service to the profession.
• National service >> Local service.
• Service to the profession makes you visible (e.g., editorial boards, Symposium moderator/organizer)
• ~10 external reviewers requested for tenure packet. If no one in the field knows you, they won't even agree to review your packet.
• If a position is 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service, that service component corresponds to one 8hr day (in a 40hr work week).

Mentoring you receive.

• You will never have a mentor like your PhD mentor again (someone so invested in your future success).
• You don't have a cohort of grad students or postdocs, but you are not alone.
• Build your support network. 
• Seek a multiplicity of mentors, in your field, different levels in the pipeline.

Mentoring you give.

• You are a visible role model
• Portray a sane work-life balance for your students and lab members (even if you're still working on it).
• You may not feel like a professor, but people will treat you like one. Act like it. 

Think beyond tenure.

• If all of your activities are done for the sole purpose of working towards tenure, you're going to be sorely disappointed after you get it. 
• Don't put all your eggs in one basket AND Don't spread yourself too thin.
• Do some research every day, no matter how small.
• Tenure criteria an the bylaws are the minimum requirements, and are open to interpretation.
• Do not meet the tenure criteria, exceed it.
• Tenure extensions: Tenure clock extensions are granted (at Arizona State University) for a variety of reasons, not just having a child (parental leave, elderly care, medical condition, lab equipment delay… talk with your chair if you have concerns). If your request for tenure extension is approved, it is sealed in an envelope, and no one on your tenure committee will know the reason, only that it was approved, and the extension can not be used against you. 

Questions to ask yourself, and honestly reflect on your answers.

• What do you want out of faculty life?
• What is it worth to you? 
• When is the cost too high?

Take-home:For the first time, you call all the shots. You are on your own, but you are fully capable of doing it.

Jumping in!

I've been at Arizona State University for four weeks. It seems like I've been running around non-stop, and so, I need to sit down and write down what I've actually accomplished these first few weeks. 

Accomplishments:

• Sites. I'm on the School of Life Sciences website: https://sols.asu.edu/people/melissa-wilson-sayres. And, my lab website is updated: https://sites.google.com/site/mwilsonsayres/.

• Space. I have access to my office and lab space. Yay!

• Orientations. Orientations (University), orientations (Department), orientations (New faculty).

• Teaching. I'm signed up to co-teach Evolution to 300+ students in Spring 2015, and just put in a proposal for developing my very own class for Fall 2015 (more details about that as soon as I hear whether it is approved). I am also going to be giving guest lectures in two undergraduate courses (Evolution and Human Genetics), and maybe in one graduate course (about current research about sex determination).

• Research. I completed my portion of the analysis and figures for a joint research project that was submitted for review yesterday! 

• Library. Introduced myself to the librarians, and learned about the resources available there.

• Equipment. Ordered lab equipment. I still have more to order, but want to research different options a bit more. I also think it will be good to wait to see what kind of expertise I'll recruit to the lab.

• Grants. Met with my several grant support office personnel, wrote outlines and tentative specific aims, and submitted pre-proposal paperwork for the three grants I plan to submit within this first year. 

• Lab Funding. I've spoken with people in the department, and have started to collect resources for research funding opportunities for postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students. 

• Postdocs. Interviewed six postdoctoral applicants. And learned a lot about administrative background/paperwork with different kinds of positions that can be hired, when, and official requirements. Whew!

• Grads. I don't yet have any graduate students, but I attended the Graduate Student Orientation, and am signed up to attend one of the Brown Bag Lunches to introduce myself to current grad students. I'll also be giving a seminar for one of graduate student colloquiums.

• Undergrads. Recruited a great group of undergraduates. We've already had our first group lab meeting and individual project meetings, and I'm going to ride this enthusiasm wave for the rest of the semester. I'll write another post soon about the projects we are working on this year. 

I'm happy to receive any unsolicited advice about what you did, wish you would have done, or wish you hadn't done, relating to starting your new faculty position.

Breaking Bio: Sex chromosomes, mathematics, and postdocs

Check out this Breaking Bio podcast about sex chromosomes, mathematics, my research, and postdocs with me!

http://breakingbio.com/2014/09/16/breaking-bio-65-sex-chromosomes-math-for-biologists-with-dr-melissa-wilson-sayres/

I had a great time, and feel like I could already do a follow up about some of the topics we discussed. Another day, perhaps. :)

No, the human Y chromosome does not look like a "Y"

A friend brought this news article about the evolution of the rhesus monkey Y chromosome to my attention. The primary work itself is about characterizing the gene content of the rhesus Y chromosome (a laborious, and necessary task). This particular write-up, however, is slightly frustrating for some of the (wrong) assumptions it makes, but most noticable is the image:

The picture of the "X and Y" chromosomes where the X chromosome, presumably, looks like an X, and the Y chromosome looks like a Y. If this were true, we might then assume that chromosome 1 looks like a "1" and chromsome 22 looks like a "22". None of these are true. 

All human chromosomes, even the six acrocentric chromosomes (13, 14, 15, 21, 22, and Y), look kind of like "X's" when they are duplicating, having sister chromatids (see this karyotype, a picture of chromosomes: https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Human_Karyotype.html). And none of the chromosomes look like X's when they are not in the duplication process (see this image from the J. Craig Venter Institute: http://www.jcvi.org/cms/fileadmin/site/research/projects/huref/figure2a.jpg).