| Research Experience | Fellowships | Publications |
I am fascinated by the constant warfare between pathogens and their hosts. I particularly love watching this battle in live single cells using cool microscopy techniques.
Research Experience
Photo by Casey A. Cass | University of Colorado
At the University of Colorado Boulder, I studied Salmonella virulence proteins. I was curious about how they helped Salmonella infect multiple cell types.
I developed a long-term imaging assay to track infections in single cells for up to 48 hours post infection using fluorescence microscopes. I also developed corresponding image analysis methods. I created several new Salmonella strains and became an expert in a variety of image analysis programs.
During this work, I attended an Andor Academy workshop at the BioFrontiers Institute. I also attended Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Quantitative Imaging course in April 2015.
My previous research includes studying how an Epstein-Barr virus protein affects cell signaling pathways, designing a computer program to model kinesin movement, using atomic force microscopy to learn how bacteria make biofilms, studying transcriptional regulation in yeast, and studying how a human T cell leukemia virus protein affects transcription in mammalian cells.
Fellowships and Travel Grants
As a graduate student, I applied for the following fellowships:
- NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellowship (received and renewed)
- Ford Dissertation Fellowship (received an honorable mention but not the grant)
- NIH T32 Training Grant: Signaling and Cell Cycle Regulation (received and renewed)
I also received these travel grants:
- Cold Spring Harbor provided me with a travel scholarship to attend their Quantitative Imaging course
- The Leadership Alliance provided me with funds to attend the Experimental Biology 2015 conference with my 2014 SMART student
- The Colorado Diversity Initiative helped fund a trip to Paris, France to take a course about ICY
Publications and Presentations
Publications
Young, A. M., Minson, M., McQuate, S. E., and Palmer, A.E. 2017. Optimized fluorescence complementation platform for visualizing Salmonella effector proteins reveals distinctly different intracellular niches in different cell types. ACS Infectious Diseases. epub ahead of print. Click here to see PlumX metrics for this paper.
McQuate, S. E., Young, A. M., Silva-Herzog, E., Bunker, E., Hernandez, M., de Chaumont, F., Liu, X., Detweiler, C.S., and Palmer, A.E. 2017. Long-Term Live Cell Imaging Reveals New Roles For Salmonella Effector Proteins SseG and SteA. Cellular Microbiology. 19, e12641. Click here to see PlumX metrics for this paper.
Sammond, D.W., Joce, C., Takeshita, R., McQuate, S.E., Ghosh, N., Martin, J.M., and Yin, H. 2011. Transmembrane peptides used to investigate the homo-oligomeric interface and binding hotspot of latent membrane protein 1. Biopolymers. 95, 772-84. Click here to see PlumX metrics for this paper.
Oral Presentations
2014 Imaging Salmonella in live cells in order to elucidate the role of effector proteins in infection, Signaling and Cellular Regulation Annual Symposium, University of Colorado Boulder
Poster Presentations
2013 Using fluorescence microscopy tools to understand the role of SteA in Salmonella infection, poster presented at the following venues: Salmonella: The bacterium, the host and the environment ASM conference, Boston, MA; New Approaches and Concepts in Microbiology EMBO conference, Heidelberg, Germany.
2011 Visualizing Salmonella effectors in host cells and characterizing the intracellular niche, poster presented at American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting, Denver, CO.
2011 Visualizing Salmonella effectors in host cells and characterizing the intracellular niche, poster presented at Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Response Meeting, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
2006 Deacetylation Levels on Histones H3 and H4 by Sir2 and Hos1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, poster presented at the following venues: Summer research poster session, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA; M.J. Murdock Conference, University of Portland, Portland, OR; and the American Chemical Society National Meeting, Chicago, IL. (2007).
2005 The Effects of the HTLV-1 Tax Protein on the Nucleosome-occupancy in the Coding Region of Genes Transcribed by RNA Polymerase II, poster presented at REU program poster session, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.