2025 was a big year for the Weber lab - multiple publications, a successful thesis defense, and some bitter-sweet turnover. Congratulations and Happy Holidays to all! (Mmm, chocolate…)
Congratulations, Dr. McGuinness!
Brendon successfully defended his doctoral thesis, Trait plasticity and the maintenance of biodiversity. Nice to have so many family and friends come to support and celebrate his accomplishment. Congratulations, Brendon!
Omid's EU labeling method posted to bioRxiv
Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Omid Gholamalamdari for developing a technique to label nascent transcripts in the worm intestine! This method allows us to measure pre-rRNA transcriptional activity and location in the C. elegans nucleolus.
Check out the preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.08.675001 and protocol: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.rm7vzqr38vx1/v1
Brendon gives a fantastic PhD exit seminar
Congratulations to PhD student Brendon McGuinness for a beautiful talk describing his thesis work on “Trait plasticity and the maintenance of biodiversity”.
Collaborative project with Lishi Mohapatra (RIT) now out in PNAS!
Congratulations to Nishant, Rabeya, Jané, and Lishi on a fun collaboration! Their model of active transcription-templated condensate assembly explains the rapid kinetics of nucleolar assembly in early embryos, and predicts the scaling of time to assembly with nuclear volume. Check out the paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411964122!
Omid presents at CSMB
Congratulations to postdoc Omid Gholamalamdari for a fantastic talk at the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences 2025 Annual Conference! He presented his work on the role of intrinsically disordered regions in nucleolus subcompartmentalization and function.
Steph visits the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Steph is co-coordinating the KITP program on Physical Principles Shaping Biomolecular Condensates, together with Jerelle Joseph, David Zwicker, and Frank Jülicher.
Lydia gives a flash talk and poster at BSC
Congratulations to PhD student Lydia Hodgins for presenting her work from her rotation with the Vera lab at the Biophysical Society of Canada!
Goodbye Peng (and Baljyot), Hello Sahil
First lab BBQ with the new Weber grill. Wonderful to welcome back old friends, and say hi to new ones.
Brendon and Lucas present at QLS Research Day
Congratulations, Peng and Sara!
Weber Lab lets out our Rage to celebrate Peng’s PhD and Sara’s MSc. Congratulations, and thanks for all the hard work!
Lucas posts his first preprint
Congratulations to PhD student Lucas Philipp, who used Hi-C data to reconstruct 3D polymer conformations of dinoflagellate chromosomes. Check out his preprint on bioRxiv!
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.24.634729v1
Baljyot graduates, Peng defends!
Big week in the Weber lab. Congratulations to Baljyot for receiving his diploma, and Peng for defending his thesis! Thank you both for all of your hard work, and good luck on your next adventure!
Peng delivers a fantastic PhD seminar
PhD student Peng A presents his thesis work to the department!
Brendon's preprint goes live on bioRxiv!
Congratulations to PhD student Brendon McGuinness, who used numerical simulations to explore the impact of intracellular constraints on the structure of microbial communities
Laeya talks to Radio-Canada about her research
Postdoc Laeya Baldini joined Moteur de recherche to discuss her work on changes in nucleolar structure during aging in C. elegans! You can listen to her interview here.
Laeya, Steph, and Sara present at EMBL
Team Worm takes over Heidelberg with two posters and a talk
Lucas attends meeting at Cold Spring Harbor
Congratulations to PhD student Lucas Philipp for presenting a poster at the CSHL meeting on Genome Organization and Nuclear Function!
Brendon presents at Department Day
Congratulations to PhD student Brendon McGuinness for giving a talk on his project at (Biology) Department Day!
Peng and Laeya present at the MCDB retreat
Congratulations to PhD student Peng A and postdoc Laeya Baldini for presenting their work at the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology retreat!
