Hello everyone! So something cool that Meghan and I were recently tasked with was starring in a movie! By publishing through JOVE, we were filmed performing the different methods and procedures we used to xenograft primary patient samples into zebrafish…
My name is Tyler Sullivan and I am a senior chemistry student at Morehead State University. Working in the Blackburn lab as part of the KBRIN program has been one of the most exciting experiences of my career. The environment was…
Congrats to our no-longer undergrads! Brad is off to med school at the University of Cincinnati and Kristin is entering the PhD program here at UK. In his year in the lab, Brad helped get our project injecting human cancer…
Caroline was recently selected to be part of the Associate Member Council at the American Association of Cancer Research. The council is made up of graduate students and post-docs, and they are the representative body for all associate members world-wide…
Margaret Blair (on the left), our Paul Laurence Dunbar MSTC researcher, just won first place in the Cellular and Molecular Biology section at the Kentucky Science and Engineering Fair, which is the big state science fair! Her project focused on…
We recently had Lexington high schoolers visit the lab and learn about the benefits of zebrafish in cancer research! Here, Jessi is showing the students how to use our Nightsea flashlight to screen for zebrafish that have GFP-tagged leukemia. Not…
I went to Tokyo, Japan to attend the Workshop on Frontiers in Phosphatase Research and Drug Development at the end of October, 2018. I gave a short talk and also presented my work in a poster on the oncogenic phosphatase…
In the middle of July, Jessi, Min and myself were able to attend the FASEB: Protein Phosphatases meeting in Snowmass Village, CO! Min and I both presented posters on our work at the meeting. Min presented the story of PRL3…
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in the University of Kentucky’s 3 Minute Thesis (3 MT) competition. The 3 MT originated out of the University of Queensland, and has become an international event. The idea behind…
Hello Dear Reader, I would like to share the very belated, very happy news with you- I got married!! Woo!!! My husband and I got married May 10th in Arenas de San Pedro, Spain (he is from Spain).…
Dear readers, I have a confession to make… graduate school is hard. Shocking, I know. If you think that you should go to graduate school because it will be an easy, interim step between undergrad and the “real world,” you…
Hello everyone! My name is Caroline Smith and I am the newest graduate student that has joined the Blackburn lab. I joined the lab in April, and I am now beginning to start my second year of graduate school. I…
Hi all, My name is Ashley and I spent the summer working in Dr. Blackburn’s lab as part of a 10-week program called Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). When I first got accepted into this program, I was both excited…
Congrats to Meghan for breezing through her quals on Friday! She is without a doubt the best MD/PhD student in the lab 😉 and we are lucky to have her on the team as she cranks through her PhD!
Hey, everyone. It’s Shea again! I recently got to present my research findings on my study repurposing FDA-approved compounds against T-ALL at my school’s senior symposium, which means that I am wrapping up both my senior year and my time…
Hey, everyone! As you may know, I am a high school senior working in Dr. Blackburn’s lab. I have had an absolutely amazing experience working with the team for the past year and a half, and it has helped shape…
Kristin was featured recently in a nice article in UKNow, “Training Kentucky’s Next Generation of Cancer Fighters“, where she discussed her work in the lab as well as all of the outreach she is doing. We’re super proud of her…
Hey everyone! I recently got to create my very own poster using my data from the lab since November 2016, and I used it to compete in the regional science fair. My project focuses on repurposing a panel of FDA-approved…
Holy moly world! This semester has been a whirlwind of activity and emotions, both professionally and personally. I’ll try to update in chronological order: May: Presented a poster at the Markey Cancer Research Day. June: Attended the Midwest Zebrafish meeting…
Congratulations to Min and Rachel on passing your quals–we are all really proud of you! I’m so lucky that in my first year here at UK, the two best grad students in the IBS program joined the lab! Here’s to…
I passed my oral exam this morning! And now I am a PhD candidate. Look at the beautiful flowers from my PI, Dr. Jessica Blackburn! I feel blessed in such a supportive environment in the lab.
My name is Kouree Chesser and I recently completed a 10 week research experience in Dr. Blackburn’s lab. This opportunity was made possible through the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU). Prior to joining the Blackburn lab, I…
My name is Shea Hausman. I am a rising high school senior, and I have been working in the Blackburn lab since November. When I tell people that I work in a cancer research lab using zebrafish, I normally get…
Hey guys! I know it has been a while since I’ve posted a blog, but a busy graduate student has to prioritize, and unfortunately a blog post on the lab website is a pretty low priority when compared to data,…
So for the past 6 months I’ve been following a protocol on how to ‘clone’ or make a syngeneic fish line. This has proved more difficult than anticipated due to the protocol being very deleterious for the embryos (heat shocking…
Hey guys, I have done… I finally finished… it is over… I have officially submitted my first student fellowship application to the NSF GRFP (https://www.nsfgrfp.org/ ). It was a monumen tal month this past October, between class work really kicking…
Woo! I can’t believe it is already August. This summer has flown by so fast between meetings, conferences, vacations, moving, ect. It feels like just a week ago I was a first year graduate student afraid of holding a pipette…
Over the past couple of months I’ve been learning how to microinject…which happens to be the most difficult and most frustrating things I’ve ever done. There are just so many parameters! You’ve gotta check the needle, cut the needle to…
Congratulations Rachel on receiving a travel award to present your poster at the Purdue Biochemistry Symposium!
After an exciting week, we microinjected our zebrafish embryos with a Crispr/Cas GFP construct in the hopes of promoting homology directed repair and tagging the hsp70i gene with GFP.
Check out our awesome new fish facility from Aquarius Fish Systems. Space for 8,000 animals and room to grow!
We just received a UK Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Pilot Project grant to identify new ways to target leukemia propagating cells. Read more about it on our Research page!