Lab Members

Research Interest: Myotonic dystrophy, repeat expansion diseases, and therapeutic development for neuromuscular disorders.

Research Interest: Uses traditional transgenic and novel genetic engineering techniques to generate mouse models of DM. These models aid in our understanding of expanded repeat toxicity and serve as valuable tools for testing potential therapeutics.

Research Interest: Focuses largely on processing tissue from human muscle biopsies. Deals with extracting RNA and cDNA and treating it so that it is of the utmost integrity and purity so that data produced can be compared and tested to learn more about DM1.

Research Interest: Performs the majority of genotyping of the 40+ transgenic lines of mice in the Thornton lab, determines breeding strategies, and attends to colony maintenance of these lines.

Research Interest: Oversees general day to day functioning of lab and general contact. Responsible for husbandry and colony maintenance of 40+ lines of transgenic mice used as therapeutic models of neuromuscular diseases.

Research Interest: mRNA splicing is a marker of molecular pathology and disease severity in myotonic muscular dystrophy

Research Interest: Currently an undergraduate majoring in Neuroscience working in the lab. Byron’s lab duties consist of running electrophoresis gels, doing PCRs and assisting Dr. Tang with his projects.

Research Interest: Currently an undergraduate majoring in Environmental Health working in the lab. Julianna works closely with technicians in the lab with DNA extraction and genotyping.