Author Archives: Jonathon Cornett

The Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology officially welcomed our incoming 2026 class of new students with a symposium event on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. The first session was hosted by Dan McKay, GMB Director of Graduate Studies and the second session was hosted by Jill Dowen, GMB Associate Director...

The UNC Chapel Hill Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology congratulates 11 Spring graduates for their hard work and accomplishments!

Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Student Riya Gohil Awarded 2026 Graduate School Dean’s Award from the UNC Chapel Hill Graduate School.

Genetics and Molecular Biology graduate students were recognized by the University of North Carolina Graduate School in April for their prestigious external fellowships.

Genetics and Molecular Biology graduate student, Oscar Arroyo (Dan McKay lab), recently published a first-author paper in Epigenetics and Chromatin titled “An RNAi-based platform for spatiotemporal control of histone gene expression during animal development”. Oscar has developed a new method for replacing the endogenous histone genes with mutant derivatives. This...

Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Student Yibo Si in the lab of Henrik Dohlman published a paper titled “Nonredundant roles for paralogous proteins in the yeast glucose-sensing pathway” in the January 20226 issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell.

The PhRMA Foundation has just published a video Q&A with Jingyu Zhao.

Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Student Mark Geisler in the lab of Bob Duronio published a paper titled “Cell-cycle-regulated transcriptional pausing of Drosophila replication-dependent histone genes” in the August 2025 issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell. Read paper HERE. See Cover Art HERE. By detecting nascent transcripts using high resolution...

Congratulation to Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Students Riya Gohil (Jill Dowen Lab) and Micah Hysong (Laura Raffield Lab), who were both selected in the top ten for the 2025 Three Minute Thesis!

Geoff Fox, a graduate student in the Genetics and Molecular Biology (GMB) curriculum, has been awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), for his project titled “Connecting cohesin and SETD2 in the regulation of genome structure and function”....

Jayna Nicholas, a graduate student in the Genetics and Molecular Biology (GMB) curriculum, has been awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), for her project titled “Cross-Ancestry Comparison of Aptamer and Antibody Proteomics Measures”. Jayna Nicolas is...

Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Student Noor Singh in the lab of Kacy Gordon published a paper titled “An RNAi screen of Rab GTPase genes in Caenorhabditis elegans reveals that morphogenesis has a higher demand than stem cell niche maintenance for rab-1 in the somatic cells of the reproductive system”...