Congratulations to our new PhD, Dr. Dalia Fleifel!

Congratulations to our new PhD, Dr. Dalia Fleifel!

Dr. Dalia Fleifel successfully defended her thesis, titled “DNA replication keynote and code: MCM’s journey on and off” on July 7, 2025. As a graduate student, Dalia was an active member of the Jean Cook lab and a student leader within the Biochemistry and Biophysics department.

Research, Mentorship and Leadership

For her thesis work, Dalia uncovered a key mechanism by which the oncoprotein c-MYC promotes rapid cell proliferation: by accelerating origin licensing during the G1 phase of the cell cycle: the rate-limiting step of DNA replication. In addition to this central discovery, Dalia collaborated extensively with research groups across UNC, contributing critical insights into the role of USP37, cyclin E1, HER2, and FGFR2 in cell cycle and cancer progression.

In addition to her research accomplishments, Dalia has been a dedicated mentor and an active leader in service and outreach. She mentored numerous undergraduate students, research technicians, and rotation students in the Cook Lab, and served as a bench and PEERs mentor for the UNC SURE program, supporting underrepresented trainees in STEM. She served as the BCBP program’s senator in the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) and co-founded the Environmental Task Force in the BCBP to encourage BCBP labs to adopt eco-friendly lab practices.

Dalia was also a passionate advocate for equity and community building at UNC. She played an instrumental role on the departmental seminar diversity committee. At the university level, she was a member of the Lineberger Cancer Center’s Equity Council, where she helped implement more inclusive policies for internal funding mechanisms to better support historically excluded groups.

Committed to science communication, Dalia co-organized the Mary Ellen Jones Distinguished Women in Science Lecture Series in the BCBP department, authored research highlights and blog posts for both the BCBP department and the NC DNA Day initiative, and contributed to the recruitment of new trainees during BBSP orientation weeks. She also served on multiple selection committees for academic and administrative positions within the BCBP and UNC, and actively showcased her research work through posters and presentations at departmental seminars and retreats, Lineberger symposia, and national scientific conferences, including the Gordon Research Conference, CSHL Genome Stability and Integrity symposium, and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting.

Awards and Fellowships

Recently, Dalia was the recipient of the Graduate Fellow Award in Basic Science from the Lineberger Cancer Center at UNC, and the Diane Harris Award for exemplary leadership from the BCBP department. Dalia was a predoctoral AHA fellow from 2023 through 2025 and was awarded an independent educational grant from Abbvie to support her travels to the AACR meeting in 2025.

Publications

Bolhuis, D.L.*, Fleifel, D.*, Bonacci, T.*, Wang, X., Mouery, B.L., Cook, J.G., Brown, N.B., Emanuele, M.J., 2025. USP37 prevents unscheduled replisome unloading through MCM complex deubiquitination. Nature Communications. 16(1):4575. doi: 1038/s41467-025-59770-7.
Wang, Y.*, Cope, O.*, Chen, J.*, Mehta, A., Fleifel, D., Ford, C., Benhamie, P., Haase, S., Gulec, S., Elston, T., Spanheimer, P., Tomblin, C.A., Rojas, A.M., Tate, T., Purvis, J., Wang, J., Dahl., J.M., Wolff, S., Cook, J.G., Brunk, E., 2025. Extrachromosomal DNA Gives Cancer a New Evolutionary Pathway. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2025.04.26.650733. (Under review).
Stephenson G., Fleifel D., Cook, J.G., Laederach A., Ramos, Silvia B.V., 2025. Differential targeting of mRNA decay activator ZFP36L2 in mouse tissues. (Under review).
Mouery, B.L., Baker, E.M., Mei, L., Wolff, S.C., Mills, C.A., Fleifel, D., Mulugeta, N., Herring, L.E., and Cook, J.G., 2024. APC/C prevents a noncanonical order of cyclin/CDK activity to maintain CDK4/6 inhibitor-induced arrest. PNAS, 121(30). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2319574121.
Fleifel, D., and Cook, J.G., 2023. G1 dynamics at the crossroads of pluripotency and cancer. Cancers, 15(18). doi: 10.3390/cancers15184559.
Limas, J.C., Littlejohn, A.N., House, A.M., Kedziora, K.M., Mouery, B.L., Ma, B., Fleifel, D., Walens, A., Aleman, M.M., Dominguez, D. and Cook, J.G., 2022. Quantitative profiling of adaptation to cyclin E overproduction. Life Science Alliance, 5(5). doi:10.26508/lsa.202201378.

Highlights

Graduate Student Spotlight: Dalia Fleifel

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