Assistant professor
@WUSTLmed
@WUSM_BMB
Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics. Mitochondria, metabolism & cell signaling. Mom of 2. Advocate for women in science.
Really thrilled to see our most recent study on PPTC7, led by
@jerrylianjiewei
, out today
@LSAjournal
. We show that PPTC7 unexpectedly localizes to the outer mitochondrial membrane to facilitate BNIP3/NIX degradation, thus limiting mitophagy.
Here, the authors show that PPTC7 dynamically localizes to the outer mitochondrial membrane to promote the turnover of the mitophagy receptors BNIP3 and NIX
@jerrylianjiewei
@nieminm
@WUSM_BMB
I am reviewing a paper in which the authors use 6 (!!!!) independent mouse models to test their hypothesis. Is this what it takes to publish now? If so, we will publish our first paper in 10 years or so. 😂😭
First day in the Niemi Lab. We are recruiting - come help us fill all of this newly renovated lab space! More details on who we are and what we do at .
#mitochondria
#WashU
A bit of good news in these strange times: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be starting my lab in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
@WUSTL
this summer. 1/n
Someone I know met a woman who's a Nobel-prize winning biologist and she said "I see you are wearing make-up, that already tells me that you're not focussed and committed enough to make it in science".
2 years later: 7 lab members, 1 alumna, 6 rotations —> 4 grad students, 1 passed QE, 6 grants submitted, 1 grant funded, 2 publications, 2 preprints, 1 lab flood, 2 -80 failures, too many tweets, lots of laughs, loads of supportive colleagues, tons of excitement for the future 🎉
First day in the Niemi Lab. We are recruiting - come help us fill all of this newly renovated lab space! More details on who we are and what we do at .
#mitochondria
#WashU
As a faculty at
@WUSTLmed
, I want to clarify that I condemn sexual harassment and discrimination and know most of my colleagues strongly align with this sentiment. I have and will continue to advocate for trainees however I can. If you need a safe space here, my door is open.
A group of postdocs organized via
@FuturePI_Slack
have collected data from >300 people who applied for STEM faculty positions this year, and want to analyze the data to help future applicants. What types of questions would you want answered with these data?
Very (very!!) happy to share our latest publication, "PPTC7 maintains mitochondrial protein content by suppressing receptor-mediated mitophagy", out today in
@NatureComms
. 1/n
About a month ago, I reached out to
@GarciaLabMS
about something I was struggling with as a junior PI. He responded quickly with sage advice. It was great.
Today, I received an unprompted follow up email to see how I was doing regarding that situation. This is leadership.
Are you interested in how mentorship of graduate students and postdocs can be improved? Our survey-based analysis of trainee mentorship practices and perceptions is now online! A 🧵1/9
To celebrate
#InternationalWomensDay
, I wanted to profile one of my all time favorite scientists, Gerty Cori - an incredible icon in metabolic biochemistry and physiology. (1/n)
Excited to see that our new review, published with
@Pagliarini_Lab
, is online at JBC! (Link: ). A Tweetorial on "The extensive and functionally uncharacterized mitochondrial phosphoproteome": (1/10)
What is the landscape of mentorship for junior faculty? Is the mentoring of junior faculty valued and beneficial? Are junior academics generally satisfied with the level of mentorship received? We gathered survey data on over 450 faculty worldwide. 🧵 1/n
Frightochondria?! Haunted house of the cell?! Come visit the Niemi Lab
@WUSM_BMB
. There is also candy by the door for your early trick or treating needs. 🎃👻
This past year, I started sending my lab one paper per day on a lab Slack channel called
#365_papers
. We covered lots of topics ranging from the structural biology of the mitochondrial protein import machinery to the physiology of disrupting fatty acid oxidation. 1/4
Excited to share our latest work, “PPTC7 limits mitophagy through proximal and dynamic interactions with BNIP3 and NIX”, led by the extra talented
@jerrylianjiewei
and representing our first independent Niemi lab manuscript. 🧵1/14
3 years ago. The department halls were as empty as these benches, with most WFH. I knew most colleagues only over Zoom. I made friends with the maintenance guys, who were amongst the only people I saw in person for 2 months. How far we have come. Cheers to year 4.
First day in the Niemi Lab. We are recruiting - come help us fill all of this newly renovated lab space! More details on who we are and what we do at .
#mitochondria
#WashU
Incredibly happy to see our paper on Pptc7, a mitochondrial phosphatase, out
@NatureComms
. We found that loss of Pptc7 disrupts metabolism, diminishes mitochondrial content, and causes perinatal lethality. Many thanks to our co-authors and collaborators!
Finally getting rid of my first car. Bought it the month I started grad school. It has seen a marriage, two degrees, one puppy, two kiddos, three states, four job changes, and 194,117 miles. Cheers and best wishes, Honda Civic. You have served our family well.
We have doubled in lab size this past month, with the addition of 3 (!)
@WUSTLdbbs
graduate students to our lab. Welcome to Tessa Lochetto,
@tloch_
first year MCB student, Youmian Yan, first year
@BBSBwustl
, and Hannah Pletcher
@hpletch
, first year
@BBSBwustl
! 🎉🥂
Hi metabolism friends - if I wanted to place mice on a high fat diet to study diet induced obesity in our mouse model, which chow/diet should I use? There are lots of options and I'm not sure if labs have specific preferences on this. Thanks!
Really excited that the lab has been awarded a new P&F grant from the Digestive Diseases Research Cores Center (DDRCC) here
@WUSTLmed
. This project will help us to transition some of our work on mitochondrial phosphorylation into the context of liver disease. 🎉
Contacted our FACS core to get trained on their instruments. Admitted that I haven’t done FACS since grad school but back then I was a pro on the BD FACSCalibur. Was told they actually *have* a FACSCalibur that no one uses… except, of course, ME now. 🎉
#FlashbackFACS
The Niemi lab is off to
@ASBMB
#DiscoverBMB
2023 in Seattle! Come check out our work on Monday (
@hpletch
) and Tuesday (
@jerrylianjiewei
) of next week. Excited to see old friends and meet new ones.
Today I had the pleasure of returning to my hometown, Grand Rapids, MI, to give a talk at
@VAInstitute
. My parents still live in town and came to see me present. Proud to report that my dad “even understood some of it” 😂🥹
A week of firsts for the Niemi Lab - today was the first day for our new members (welcome Michaela and Emily!). Tomorrow, the first Niemi Lab journal club covering the classic MitoCarta paper by
@Pagliarini_Lab
and
@VamsiMootha
. Will be fun to reread it with a new crowd!
@DrPorman
There is always more to do, so for me, it has been helpful to keep a mindset that whatever gets done today has to be good enough. Some days are more productive than others, and that’s okay. Also, knowing 1. this is just a job, 2. you are not your job, and 3. you are enough.
Our lab has had a great couple of weeks! First,
@BBSBwustl
student Emily Harrelson started her rotation with us. Second, we had two
@BBSBwustl
students pass their QEs this week - congratulations to newly minted PhD candidates Hannah
@hpletch
and Youmian Yan! 🎉🎉🎉
Third (!!) annual state of the lab address today. It’s fun to look at the past documents and realize that we actually have come a long way since July 2020, despite progress feeing slow at times. Cheers to the coming year! 🥂
So excited to have
@BBSBwustl
Hannah Pletcher
@hpletch
join our lab
@WUSM_BMB
for her thesis work! Hannah is broadly interested in mitochondrial metabolism, and I can't wait to see all of the amazing discoveries that she will make during her time in graduate school. 🎉🎉
Looking forward to the
@ASBMB
2022 meeting! Stop by the Mitochondria Interest Group on Saturday (3-5 p.m.) or our poster (
#A317
) in the Protein kinases & phosphatases session on Sunday (12:45-2 p.m.) to hear about our work. So excited to see colleagues in person!
#ASBMB2022
Our hood has a fun (depressing?) feature of tracking hours spent doing tissue culture. I guess it’s only fitting for me to pass the 1000th hr (=41.67 days) of TC in the first Niemi lab hood.
#PIinthelab
Congratulations to two graduate students in our department, Hannah Pletcher
@hpletch
and Tessa Lochetto
@tloch_
(both in the
@nieminm
lab), for being awarded Honorable Mentions for the NSF GRFP! This is a great achievement!
#proudBMBnation
Today we said goodbye to Niemi lab technician Michaela Morhaus, the lab's first hire. She is off to pursue her MD/PhD
@UWMSTP
@UWMadison
. Congratulations and best of luck, Michaela!
K2 is ‘star of the week’ in his kindergarten class starting tomorrow. He gets to bring in his favorite book to be read to the class. This is the one he chose. 🤣
Our publication on faculty mentorship is out
@royalsociety
! Check it out here: . See thread below if interested in some of our findings, which we expanded with further analyses during revision.
#mentorship
What is the landscape of mentorship for junior faculty? Is the mentoring of junior faculty valued and beneficial? Are junior academics generally satisfied with the level of mentorship received? We gathered survey data on over 450 faculty worldwide. 🧵 1/n
Congratulations to
@BBSBwustl
and Niemi lab graduate student Emily Harrelson on passing her qualifying exam! An excellent way to start the weekend. 🥳 🎉
#ProudPI
Congratulations to Jerry Wei
@jerrylianjiewei
for winning the 2022 MilliporeSigma Award! This award, given to an outstanding student in biochemistry and molecular biophysics, was established
@WUSM_BMB
in memory of Gerty Cori in 1958. Well deserved, Jerry! 🎉
#ProudPI
It was truly a pleasure to highlight this fantastic study from
@guha_sukanya
,
@AsifaAkhtar1
, and colleagues in
@NatMetabolism
. Their work finds MOF, a histone acetyltransferase, localizes to mitochondria to acetylate COX17 and promote Complex IV activity.
My parents found my Twitter account today and relayed all of their favorite tweets, some going back years. I guess they read my entire feed in one sitting. 😂 (If you’re reading this, hi Mom and Dad.)
Congratulations to Hannah Pletcher
@hpletch
for winning the inaugural BMB Science Communication Award! The award recognizes a first year
@WUSM_BMB
student for their clarity in scientific reasoning and their contributions to science communication. Well deserved, Hannah!🎉
#ProudPI
Congratulations to Tessa Lochetto
@tloch_
for passing her qualifying exam today!!! Excited and VERY proud to have three graduate students advance to Ph.D. candidacy this year! 🥹🤩🎉
My husband, a banker, had to move offices today. Overhearing our discussion about this, Kid
#2
exclaimed, “Dad?! You moved?! When can we go see your new lab!?!”
😂😂😂
By far my favorite part of today has been seeing all of the incredible celebrations and stories about
@CarolynBertozzi
. A Nobel is an incredible honor, but I think being so highly regarded by the collective scientific community is the truest measure of achievement in science.
Lab exceeded expectations with their idea of the “mitopha-tree” for the
@WUSM_BMB
door decorating contest this year. Ornaments include proteins and organelles in autophagosomes.
#powerhomefortheholidays
We need more messages like this. I also defended my thesis while pregnant and had two kids during my postdoc. Academia and parenthood aren’t mutually exclusive.
Obtaining a PhD and having children are not mutually exclusive. Had my first son in the beginning of my PhD. Last week, I defended my PhD at 37 weeks pregnant. Despite folks telling me it wasn't possible, I am looking forward to being both a mom and assist prof this fall.
To so many of my friends and colleagues who now find themselves in a state that no longer supports or values their rights:
I hope you will not heed to call to flee. I hope you will heed the call to fight.
We are stronger together.
#Resist
Friendly reminder that
@WUSM_BMB
has an open faculty position available! I have found our department to be incredibly supportive. Excellent start up package, top notch students
@WUSTLdbbs
, fantastic collaborators and core facilities. Deadline 9/1/23.
@WUSM_BMB
at the 1st annual Graduate Student, Staff, & Faculty Awards! --
@AndreaSoranno
&
@nieminm
awarded Outstanding Faculty Member along with
@tloch_
&
@aflynn031
winning Outstanding Service and Commitment to St. Louis awards. Congratulations! We are lucky to have you in BMB!
There was a time, seemingly not too long ago, where my best friend could convince me to sign up for a 10K and, even though I hadn’t trained for it, I could roll out of bed mildly hungover and crush it out. Friends, TIL those times are solidly in my past. 🫠😬🥵
Looking forward to seeing everyone at
#cellbio2023
! Stop by and chat after the Integration of signaling and metabolism in cell physiology minisymposium (Sunday, 12/3/2023, talk at 5:50 PM) or at my poster Monday, 12/42023 12:15 PM - 3:15 PM).
#mitochondria
Yesterday, Dr. George Vande Woude, a prominent cancer researcher and Founding Research Director of the
@VAInstitute
, passed away. A thread on his contributions to cancer research,
@VAInstitute
, and more. 1/12
Congratulations to Niemi lab grad student
@jerrylianjiewei
for winning an ASBMB travel award!! Excited to join Jerry and Hannah
@hpletch
in Seattle and have some Niemi lab representation (beyond Niemi) at a national meeting! 🎉
Lots of proteins have been shown to localize within mitochondria to mediate metabolism. This study is an important reminder that thorough biochemical characterization of such events is needed, as many proteins localize TO mitochondria (i.e. outside) and not IN mitochondria.
Finally did something today that I have been procrastinating for months. It was worse than I expected, reenforcing my procrastination habits for the future. 😂😭
A couple of days late, but excited to welcome
@WUSTLdbbs
student Tessa Lochetto to a rotation in our lab! Tessa is a first year MCB student interested in mitochondria and cardiovascular disease. Welcome, Tessa!