Marissa

Marissa

What are you doing at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute?

I am the Project Manager for BioQuest Academy. Mainly, I teach about global health, infectious disease, biomedical research and laboratory techniques. I also host high school tours, give talks and hands-on demonstrations for students, donors, and the community at large.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Uruguay.

Where did you go to college? What did you like about your school?
I did my undergraduate studies in the University of Uruguay. Going to university in Uruguay is very different from going to college in the US. First of all, the university is free. Second, you do not live on campus, but with your parents. More importantly, instead of taking a series of courses in different areas and declaring a major once you decide what you are interested in, we start making that decision in the 10th grade, since the courses you take in the last two years of high school determine what program you can enter (e.g. medicine, biology, architecture, engineering). Also, all the courses we take relate to your major and most are pre-defined.

What did you do after you graduated?
After my BS, I went to Italy to get a Master’s Degree. I got a scholarship to live in Rome for one year and I also worked in a lab at the Mayo Clinic for six months. I wanted to make sure research was my true passion before going for a PhD, which would take 4-5 years.

Why did you apply to grad school?
I obtained my PhD from Penn State University. It is in a small college town, which allows you to focus on your work. It is not very international at the undergraduate level, but there is a lot of diversity in the graduate level studies. I chose this university based on the research lab I wanted to work in. I applied to graduate school because it was the obvious next step for someone interested in a scientific career and passionate about asking questions. In graduate school I studied gene regulation. My postdoc was at the University of Washington.

Why did you come to Seattle Biomedical Research Institute?
I came to Seattle Biomedical Research Institute because my experience both in graduate school and as a postdoc was in basic research and I wanted my work to bring me closer to human disease - I worked on a malaria vaccine project for almost four years, in the lab of Dr. Patrick Duffy.

What are your hobbies outside of the lab?
Quilting, reading and spending time with my family.

From where you are now, what advise would you give to incoming and graduate BioQuest students?
BioQuest is a great portal to explore career options you might not have considered before. It is a great way to test whether you are interested in the areas of laboratory research, global health, public health, at a time when you are busy planning your future.

Publications:

1. Intrinsic tethering activity of endosomal Rab proteins (in press in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology)
2. NSR-seq transcriptional profiling enables identification of a gene signature of Plasmodium falciparum parasites infecting children.
3. Malaria sporozoite proteome leaves a trail.
4. Interaction of an atypical Plasmodium falciparum ETRAMP with human apolipoproteins.
5. Structural genomics of pathogenic protozoa: an overview.
6. Efficient termination of vacuolar Rab GTPase signaling requires coordinated action by a GAP and a protein kinase.
7. A TSC22-like motif defines a novel antiapoptotic protein family.
8. A protein interaction network of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
9. A facile method for high-throughput co-expression of protein pairs.
10. Promoter targeting of chromatin-modifying complexes.
11. Distribution of acetylated histones resulting from Gal4-VP16 recruitment of SAGA and NuA4 complexes.
12. ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling complexes.
13. Location and function of linker histones.
14. H1-mediated repression of transcription factor binding to a stably positioned nucleosome.
15. Evolution of codon usage and base contents in kinetoplastid protozoans.