Lab News

Congratulations to Garrett on his promotion, effective May 1, 2026. We are grateful for his contributions to the lab!

We are delighted to celebrate the successful Ph.D. graduation of Sofia Ievleva. Sofia has been a valued member of the lab, and it has been a true pleasure to watch her grow and develop as a scientist. We are grateful for her contributions and wish her all the best in her next chapter and continued success in her future endeavors.

Felix joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow on May 1.

She officially joined the lab as a PhD student on March 31 and is supported by the Quad Fellowship.

We show that ligand-binding pockets thought to be structurally rigid can display temperature-dependent ligand recognition, revealing an underappreciated role of physiological temperature in biophysical studies and drug development. This was a great team effort—thanks to everyone involved!
Link to the preprint.

We are excited to welcome the undergraduate students who have joined the lab over the past year:

Sophia Du — joined in May 2025
Tracy Liang — joined in September 2025
Rita Yu — joined in October 2025
Nathan Kim — joined in January 2026

Published today in Nature Communications: the laxative bisacodyl and its active metabolite directly activate TRPM4 to regulate intestinal fluid homeostasis. A great collaboration with Dr. Cao’s lab at China Pharmaceutical University!

A unified allosteric site controls TRPM5 function, published today in Nature Chemical Biology.