Teresa Lee

Congrats to our 2026 GSA Award recipients! They have made significant contributions to science, including scientific discoveries, mentoring, creation of community resources, and education. Learn more about them: buff.ly/6zAwQQ1

Join us in celebrating their accomplishments.👏

1/3🧵⬇️

🪱Worm-friends! Join us this summer in Madison for the C. elegans topic meeting(s) - MAPSS *and* DevCell 🪱

Early birds get the you-know-what, and the early registration deadline is THIS FRI: conferences.union.wisc.edu/ceaging/

It's buy-one-get-one, and who out there doesn't love a deal?? 🙌

Even without an on-campus voting site, NCAT students still marched to the polls. 💙💛 Students at North Carolina A&T showed that barriers won’t stop their voices. When access isn’t easy, they organize. ... TikTok video by HBCU Student Action Alliance

North Carolina lawmakers have voted to remove all college campus voting sites. Specifically at the largest HBCU in the US NC A&T. They now have to walk 30 minutes to their nearest polling place. Students are protesting this - pls share and support.

www.tiktok.com/t/ZThx29BJ9/

we all OBVIOUSLY started grad school as toddlers since none of us look a day over 25 💁‍♀️

We knew we made a great team after TA-ing dev bio together, which is why we're working (along with fellow Berkeley-alum Mansi Srivastava) to plan a great meeting for y'all at #NESDB2026!
*** May 1-3 at the MBL - registration opens soon! ***

Last week, I hosted John Young for our departmental seminar & we heard about his evo-devo approach to understanding bird and amphibian limb development!🦤🐥🐸
We were in the same PhD cohort at Berkeley (we realized that it was nigh on 20 yrs ago😶) & I love catching up with his lab each year at NESDB.

🥳 Congrats on a beautiful story!

Just another shoutout for Deepshi's paper, hot off the presses at #GENETICS!

Just *look* at that beautiful epistasis data... 😍 May all of our future results be so clear to interpret 🤗

It's also a dream come true to publish alongside my science heroes with @genetics-gsa.bsky.social - the process was truly as fast, humane, and constructive as advertised. Send them your genetics & genomics work!

This story is extra special, due to the collab with the Checchi lab at Marist College. I first met Paula at a Meiosis GRC, where we commiserated about counting meiotic RAD-51. Little did I know where that would lead 14 yrs later (& that we'd still be doing the same expt in Fig 3 😅). NETWORK, y'all!

This story highlights the complex interplay of how chromatin structure protects fertility and genome integrity. Even better, it features the work of seniors Kelin & Thiago (applying to PhD programs as we speak) and tech-extraordinaire Scott (currently in his PhD at Minnesota).

🎉 LEE LAB PAPER ANNOUNCEMENT for this month's issue of #GENETICS! We're celebrating from both coasts, bc after defending her MS in 2024, Deepshi's now a biotech researcher in the Bay Area.

tl;dr: nucleosome remodeling is necessary to repair germline DNA damage 🧬
academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Dealing with ScienCV formatting Some tips for composing and making your new NIH biosketch not look like garbage

Been hearing some horrifying chatter about dealing with the new #NIH common form and #ScienCV system, so I put together a short video with some tricks for mitigating some of those pain points.

Hope it helps? 🧪

open.substack.com/pub/emptymod...

Title: An argument for not ignoring eugenics in our genetics curriculum

Dr. Mark Peifer (@peiferlabunc.bsky.social)argues that understanding the history of eugenics is critical for up-and-coming geneticists and should be included in college curriculums. www.cell.com/news-do/pr-e...

@cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social

a highlight of my time in berkeley was seeing him around town, but the best sighting was when he crossed in front of the movie theatre playing 'inequality for all' 🤩

Late job posting: My department is hiring a tenure-track faculty member in microbiology! Please share with anyone interested in working at a PUI. We have a preference for someone who can teach Medical Microbiology, but other than that the focus is open-ended. Happy to answer qs.

Changes to NSF peer review They're not good. At all.

Y'all, I just got out of the NSF-BIO webinar where they explained changes to peer review. It's not good. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/changes-to-n...

Live thread of the NSF biology virtual office hour:

🧵

📽️Please allow us to present our latest Lee lab production: Holding lab equipment like men hold their fish 🪝🐟

Is it just us, or do y'all also get unreasonably attached to your favorite tools of the trade??
(all credit to @kcs-umasslowell.bsky.social for giving us this idea for a REEL good time🎣)

A good time for a reminder that the BIO Directorate will hold a Virtual Office Hour on Thursday www.nsf.gov/events/nsf-b...

And that's a wrap on another fun semester of Advanced Genetic Analysis! 🧬 This year, one of the big hits was our mini-debates about topics like genetic testing or human embryonic gene editing (where students wore the hats of various pro/con stakeholders for a congressional subcommittee mtg) 🤓

Alack! The Biology Dept has fallen prey to the wiles of the Googly Eye Bandit, who's clearly out to impinge upon the dignity of my esteemed colleagues. Please refer to the official suspect sketch to help us ID the perp.
(Let's hope the Bandit doesn't target @kcs-umasslowell.bsky.social next...)

I am hiring a postdoc (or two!) to work on C. elegans reproductive system development. Our MIRA funds work on cell size, migration, and niche signaling. Our CAREER funds work on regulation of gonad growth, degrowth, and regeneration during and after starvation

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/310...

I've loved serving on the Board of @genetics-gsa.bsky.social! 🧬 It's been an honor to give back to the community that's given me so much, not to mention *so much fun* to brainstorm what comes next for genetics and the folks who love it 🤓

I've always loved the openness and collegiality of our C. elegans community 🪱, but this perspective really helps emphasize just *how important* those traits are for scientific progress. A true tribute to how curiosity-driven science leads to innovation! 🙌

photo of a research lab with warm white string lights strung from the shelves

It's time for the return of seasonal daylight-savings-time lights in the lab! These go up in Nov and stay til Mar, because the darkness waits for no holiday. 🕯️
(They're currently a tasteful autumnal warm white, but we finally figured out to program them, so stay tuned for more festive colorways!)

Read this inspiring perspectives coauthored by the Worm Resource directors and worm Nobel Laureates! 4 Nobel Prizes and how they were enabled by major NIH-supported research resources (the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center, WormBase, and WormAtlas) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I'm esp proud of morphing my Ubx costume into cheapdate (it's my phenotype!!) with a lil help from trainees in acquiring an authentic KFC bag.

(Close observers will note the lack of C. elegans names, but we all know that Dpy or Let don't hold a candle to names in other models).

Happy all hallows from the Lee lab! 🎃🐈‍⬛👻 Here we are at the UMass Lowell Biology retreat dressed in all our mutant genetic glory🧬

Featuring: Hh, chpd, lfng from the mighty 🪰, Shh & sparc from 🐟, & Mario from 🐣.

Another successful UML Biology retreat in the books! 🎃👻🧬 This year, we were at Taffeta Music Hall, and it was filled with costumes, science, lunchtime trivia, & minimal crowd-surfing (as requested by the signs).
Stay tuned for costume updates from the Lee lab (we had a GREAT theme this year 🤓)