Welcome to the Lab Anza!

October 2022:Anza Connaughton joins the lab for undergraduate research. Anza will be studying how long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) genes evolved to be human specific and not conserved in other species. These special lncRNAs arose from jumping transposable elements called endogenous retroviruses. We hypothesize that the transposon promoted the genesis of some lncRNA genes and thus would be functional. Now Anza boldly takes on this challenge !