Principal Investigator: Michael T. McManus obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, where he studied RNA editing in the laboratory of Stephen L. Hajduk. He did his postdoctoral training as a Cancer Research Institute fe llow, in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying the role of RNA-interference pathways in mammals. Last year he was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the University of California San Francisco Diabetes Center, in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He has a long-standing interest in post-transcriptional gene regulation and the role of small RNAs in gene expression.
		Administrative Assistant: Lily Yu, the world's greatest admin! She's secretly a groupie of a heavy metal band. The paparazzi managed to get a picture of her at a concert in Stern Grove Park. Guess who's playing?
		Tech: Ali Brincat Ali graduated from Stanford with a Bachelors of Science in Biology. While at Stanford she caught butterflies with the Watt lab, bombarded worms in the Kim lab and was most recently a technician working with zebrafish in the Talbot lab. She is currently the person to go to for all things related to the lentiviral RNAi core. When not in the lab she enjoys painting and watching T.V.
		Tech: Weronika Patena graduated from Caltech with a Bachelors of Science degrees in Biology and Computational Science. As a student she has been involved in a diversity of research projects at Caltech and Stanford. She is now in charge of developing, maintaining, and distributing lentiviral RNAi libraries. Here she is looking for complex life-forms on one of her planetary missions.
		Post-doc: Greg is an MD/PhD endocrine fellow, who trained in Art Weiss's lab here at UCSF. He is using lentiviral libraries to ask questions related to endocrine pathways.
		Tech: Ronald Basco. Ron is our expert injectionist and is a throwback from DeltaGen days, when there were DeltaGen days. We are still looking for a picture and when we actually spot him, we'll take a snapshot to prove he actually does exist! Until then, we'll only have transgenics.
		Grad Student: Trinna Cuellar is a graduate of Drexel University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biology. Post-receiving her degree, Trinna trained in the lab of Aleister Saunders, where she studied the proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP). Prior to receiving her degree, she trained in 3 additional labs: in an oncology lab at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where she studied an immunotherapeutic protein for the treatment of cancer, in a comparative genomics lab (also at GSK), and in the lab of Jeremy Lee, where she studied muscle formation in Drosophila. At present she is a 4th year PhD student in the UCSF BMS program. She is currently interested in understanding the role of Dicer and microRNAs in the mammalian brain. She flies her airplane into work in the morning.
		Grad Student : Yun Choi graduated from the University of Maryland just before the slacker tax took effect when he accidentally completed the requirements for a biology degree. In addition, he received a B.A. in French Literature as a parting gift. Nocturnal by nature, he was sometimes spotted in the laboratory of Steve Mount muttering about ESEs and pre-mRNA splicing. If seen, approach with caution, preferably with pastry and caffeinated beverage in hand. He's doing something with miRNAs.
		Grad Student : Ruby Hsu received her bachelors degree from Harvard University, where she studied the evolution of opsins in mimetic Costa Rican butterflies. She then worked in the lab of Eric Kandel at Columbia University investigating local protein synthesis at the synapse. She is currently a neurobiology graduate student at Columbia conducting a joint research project with Joseph Gogos' lab investigating the role of microRNAs in human genetic diseases. She always has microRNAs on the brain...
		Undergraduate Student : Ivan Osokine is getting his bachelors degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is studying microRNAs in the lab, and is fascinated by immune biology. We told him that he needed to get out of the lab more often, but from this picture its not quite clear he knew what we meant (he's a bit of a bookworm!)
		Post-doc: Robert Jan Lebbink is a graduate of the Wageningen University in The Netherlands where he received his Master of Science in Molecular sciences. He obtained his PhD in Immunology in the lab of Linde Meyaard at the University Medical Center in Utrecht The Netherlands, where he studied the role of the inhibitory immune receptor LAIR-1 in immune regulation. He looks so cool in his canoe! He really impressed us by rowing his way across the Atlantic, and we took this picture as he was arriving into the Bay. He is currently studying the role of microRNAs in haematopoiesis.
		Post-doc: Leon Huang obtained Bachelors and Masters of Science degrees from the Institute of Medical Technology of National Taiwan University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Microbiology and Immunology Molecular Genetics Department at UCLA, training with Dr. Sherie Morrison's lab, where he developed novel tactics to target and cure cancers. He came here when he realized there is a big importance for small RNAs, and he is now interrogating the role of microRNAs in cancer. When he is not in the lab he plays ball for the Giants, where we watch him play on our lab outings!
		Post-doc: Courtney Harper graduated from UCSF with a PhD in Bioinformatics. She studied in Patsy Babbitt's lab, taking on projects involving alternative splicing, Human Papillomavirus detection, and gene trapping. She has traveled the world, but has seen very little of the Americas - which she hopes to change in the coming years. For now, she has settled for exploring the Bay Area on her new road bike as a member of the Team Alameda bike club. She enjoys purchasing novels and DVDs and storing them to read/view at some future point, and needs to find a new Halloween costume so she isn't Princess Mononoke for a 4th year running.
		Tech: Theresa Chan graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering. During her time at Cornell, she developed a high-throughput dialysis system for the purification of polymer gene vectors in David Putnam's lab and worked on a wireless endoscope for use in racehorses with Normand Ducharme. Currently, she is using lentiviral shRNA libraries, and also interested in studying transcriptional gene silencing. She also has an insatiable thirst for Coca-Cola.
		Tech: David Adler, received his bachelors degree in molecular and cellular biology from UC Berkeley. He worked as undergraduate researcher in Judy Campisi's lab at LBNL, where he studied the molecular mechanisms of aging and cancer. David has picked up a few extra lab tricks during his summer research internships at UC San Diego and Amgen. As a member in the McManus Lab, David is working on several projects that we hope will elucidate the in vivo functions of several microRNAs. When Dave is not in lab, he can probably be found surfing at Ocean Beach or Pacifica.
		Specialist: Chong Park has a BS and MS from Sogang University in Seoul, Korea and a Ph.D. from Biochemistry and Molecular Biology dept. at SUNY Stony Brook. Michael Hayman's lab signal transduction in cancer cells. Postdoctoral training with Gerald Thomsen at SUNY Stony Brook. TGFbeta/Smads signaling in dorso-ventral axis formation. Postdoc training with Deepak Srivastava at Gladstone Institute, UCSF. Transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation during heart development.
alumni
		Grad Student : Alex Adai is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where he gained a bachelors of science degree in physics. Alex has previously worked with Joe DeRisi on Plasmodium bioinformatics, Venkatesan Sundaresan on plant microRNAs, and Edward Marcotte on protein interaction networks. He is currently a PhD student in the UCSF Biomedical Infomatics (BMI) program. He is currently interested in different bioinformatics projects relating to microRNAs and is training with Ru-Fang Yeh.
		Tech: Amy Heidersbach is a graduate of University of California, San Diego, where she gained a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. Amy completed an academic internship in the lab of Ethan Bier, studying the biology and mechanisms of Drosophila wing vein enhancer sequences. Amy is currently the chief person behind the scenes in the lentiviral RNAi core and is also directing her interests towards dissecting mechanisms of the RNAi pathway. What do you think she does for fun? Mouse over her picture to see! She is now in the UCSF BMS PhD program (after getting back to Costa Rica).
		Tech:Gabriel (Gabe) Loeb graduated from Stanford with a Bachelors of Science in Biology. He worked in the Tissue Optics Lab at the University of Arizona, did a neuro-pharmacology internship at Roche Bioscience, was a drug-delivery intern at ALZA, and learned about the terrors of glucocorticoids in the Sapolsky laboratory at Stanford. He is now using microRNA microarrays to explore basic biology behind small RNA function. He is now in an MD/PhD program at UW Seattle (after his India travels!)
		Undergrad: John Ebrahim is also getting his bachelors degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is studying microRNAs and developing in situ methodolgies for their visualization in tissues. He's got a pretty visual hairdoo too. Med School on the way!
		Post-doc: Brandon Ason obtained a Bachelors degree in Genetics at UGA, a Masters of Science in Chemistry from Arizona State University, and a doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He trained at the Hubrecht Laboratory in the Netherlands with Ronald Plasterk, where he helped pioneer LNA in situ methods and apply them to developmental biology. Brandon is now a scientist at Sirna therapeutics... at Mission Bay!
		Tech: Jose Rodriguez. Jose makes sure things are running smoothly in the lab, and helps manage our mouse colony. He has the stamina to perform over 500 PCRs a day and plays football across the street during his lunch hour!