Dr. Erika Geisbrecht's Bio

Due to my interests in science in primary and secondary school, I always thought I would enter the field of Medicine. Soon after starting as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Kathy Barton, whose lab studies mechanisms of meristem development in the plant model Arabidopsis thaliana. By the end of my first semester, I knew I would be attending graduate school with the goal of academic research.

After completing my undergraduate degree in Genetics and Microbiology, I moved to Baltimore, MD. I was fortunate to be trained under the guidance of Dr. Denise Montell at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. My decision to join Denise's lab was an easy one as I was impressed with the elegant genetic approach being taken to identify genes required for border cell migration in Drosophila oogenesis. To this end, two separate stories emerged during my graduate studies. We found that an unconventional myosin, Myosin VI, was essential for border cell migration and ovarian cancer. We also demonstrated a non-apoptotic role for the Drosophila inhibitor of apoptosis (DIAP1) in the regulation of actin polymerization through the GTPase Rac1.

Having a solid background in genetics, I aimed for a post-doc where I could continue to study cell signaling in development using a combination of genetics and biochemistry. I was lucky to find this combination in Susan Abmayr's lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research where we focused on the study of muscle development in the Drosophila embryo. In contrast to other well-studied developmental processes in the fly, fewer genes had been characterized in embryonic myoblast fusion. Thus, it seemed an ideal system for long-term studies. Receiving an NRSA fellowship allowed me to focus on characterization of the role of conserved Ced-12/ELMO protein in myoblast fusion. We also undertook a large-scale proteomics approach to identify new players that function in embryonic myogenesis. Candidates that emerged from this in vivo protein screen formed the basis for some of the ongoing projects in our lab.

I joined the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. After five years, our laboratory moved to the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics department at Kansas State University to expand our research program. Since I am a Midwest girl at heart, Manhattan, KS is a good fit for a healthy balance between science and family.