Sanders Lab News — Sanders Lab (UTSW)

October 10, 2024: Exciting news! The Sanders Lab is pleased to announce that it has received its first grant rejections: two in one day! Huzzah! Here’s to the many decades of rejection to come! Fortunately, David is well versed in rejection. I mean…have you met him?

**October 4, 2024**: Genentech, inventor of making bank off recombinant proteins, received the David Sanders seminar experience. A new lab enemy was made: that damn biotech-bro security robot. Never…ever….trust….robots!

October 1, 2024: David brought his brash brand of scientific barnstorming to UT Southwestern’s MSTP 2024 Works in Progress Seminar Series. Students seemed slightly entertained by the chaos. Not as entertained as David was by his own rhetoric, that’s for sure.

September 24, 2024: David enjoyed presenting the lab’s vision to UT Southwestern’s New Faculty Forum. So many great colleagues performing exciting research! Incredibly kind introduction by fearless center director, Marc Diamond!

September 17, 2024: In light of the recent P Diddy indictment, David apologizes for his April 18 news post referencing this so-called '“Bad Boy” and “puffy” man. NO COLLUSION!

June 20, 2024: After navigating several serpentine channels of bureaucracy, the Sanders Lab is now an insured “youth camp”! Thanks to administrator, Tiffany Nguyen, for helping us with state compliance. So what does it mean for the lab to be a camp!? Basically we are now able to host high school interns in the wet lab space. As David never knows when to stop pressing his luck, he has designated such rising stars as “Sanders Lab Youth Achievers”. It’s kinda like a prestigious scholarship, but no prestige or money is involved. Only experience, scientific fun, and a letter of recommendation! We look forward to inspiring high school students to follow a scientific career and maybe make a discovery (or friend?) along the way. :)

June 17, 2024: Our final senior researcher, Shefali Banerjee, has started in the lab! Shefali joins us from the University of Virginia, where she performed exciting work on the function of DDX39A/B in RNA splicing. As a senior scientist in the lab, she will be applying her expertise in RNA sequencing to several outstanding questions regarding RNA homeostasis. The entire team is thrilled to have Shefali in the lab! Welcome!

June 3, 2024: We are pleased to host our first summer trainees/interns: Harper Averitt, Srivinya (‘Vinni’) Karusala, and Hewes Lance. We hope our lab inspires as much love for science as our initial training grounds provided!

**May 31, 2024**: The entire lab is **THRILLED** to learn that Vaibhav Bommareddy will be joining the lab for his MD/PhD studies. David is personally humbled that such a remarkable young scientist would join his (new/untested) group.

April 18, 2024: AI does it again! First it wrote faculty candidate thank you emails to Nobel prize winners as P-diddy style raps. Now it writes theme songs for my new lab. Truly a transformative technology! https://suno.com/song/d723b4be-7939-4745-bc28-4d2559bff8e4

**April 14, 2024**: The lab took its first group outing to some weird reptile/bug convention thing. While most lab members (reasonably) posed with snakes, sloths, and other cool breathing beasts, David spent the afternoon looking for weird bugs and sickly frogs. He bought some. EDIT: They were all eaten by maggots. Circle of academia….I mean, life.

**April 8, 2024**: The sky got black because some stupid moon thing got in the way of the sun. So. The lab took the day off and trusted the integrity of our future eyesights to free eclipse glasses that were manufactured by an unknown vendor in an unknown country. We’re near a hospital. Sure it’s fine.

**April 5, 2024**: First Sanders Lab meeting. The most exciting one: discussion of database organization. Very metal! Next on agenda? Cure the diseases. First up: all of them. All. Guessing…boron (?)…is the answer? Certainly boron. Not manganese, that’s for sure. Still on my element shit list.

**April 3, 2024**: Today, we welcome our latest postdoctoral fellow, Rupam Ghosh, who abandoned the cash-laden fields of the consulting world to return to the academic fold. Rupam received a PhD from UT Southwestern, so is well versed in our unbreakable bureaucracy! Texas may love freedom, but not when it comes to paperwork!

**April 2, 2024**: Big day for the lab. Baby mantid’s first molt! They grow up so fast! …New PI priorities. Time spent writing grants to date: 1 hour. Time spent attending to lab pet (mantis colony): 50 hours. No regrets.

**March 31, 2024**: Getting bigger! First molt soon! Still have 80+ survivors at Day 10. But guessing the crowded enclosure will cause mantids to climb over those molting and lead to rampant failed instar progressions.

March 26, 2024: We hosted our first IN-PERSON post-doc applicant today! We enjoyed learning about her exiting work on RNA splicing and hope she continues her scientific journey as a member of the lab!

**March 21, 2024**: The Sanders lab has hundreds of mantids. Be afraid. Be very afraid! Video for the fans: https://x.com/DavidWSanders2/status/1770927008123429165

**March 8, 2024:** We are equally excited to share that the lab’s second postdoctoral fellow, Yasmeen Khan, has arrived! David enjoyed giving her a tour of the lab space today. She will officially start on Monday, planning to lead work on RNA homeostasis in the cytoplasm. *Narrator: how did that transition to lysosome homeostasis?*

**March 4, 2024:** We are excited to announce that the lab’s first postdoctoral fellow, Grigorii (Grisha) Sultanakhmetov, has officially started! He will be working on TDP aggregation and whatever else he gets excited about tomorrow. Welcome to the lab, Grisha!

**February 16, 2024:** David enjoyed giving a flash talk to students who have been accepted into the graduate programs at UT Southwestern. He hopes that they find their visitation weekends as magical as he did when he was in their shoes!

**February 15, 2024:** Our lab space has unexpectedly become a hot spot to shoot promo commercials for UT Southwestern. Have a passion for science AND want to add a credit to your IMDB profile? Join the Sanders Lab. Where stars are born!

February 12, 2024: While they usually frown on “clubs and committees” (TM: hero of lab, Steve McKnight), The Sanders Lab is pleased to join fellow phase cultists in the UT Southwestern Condensate Club. Amazing group of labs with shared interests who meet once per month to discuss preliminary data! Much better than that so-called “Phase Group” at Princeton. Too much theory, not enough action! ;)

February 8, 2024: Thanks to Barbara Stopschinski for putting us in touch with a (for now, unnamed) brilliant clinician scientist at UT Southwestern, who is enthusiastic about contributing human samples to our neuromuscular research. A great honor! We will try our best to use these precious samples to find predictive biomarkers and treatments for debilitating muscular diseases. We are incredibly grateful for all patients who contribute to high-risk translational research!

**February 7, 2024:** David enjoyed attending the first UT Southwestern New PI Happy Hour! It was wonderful to meet so many excellent new colleagues. Thank you to Ashley Solmonson and Frankie Heyward for organizing!

February 1, 2024: David enjoyed presenting his work on polyanionic disassemblers of tau inclusions and nuclear speckles to the IDP virtual seminar series. Thanks to friend of the lab, Alex Holehouse, for the kind invite!

January 29, 2024: WITH DELIVERY OF A LIQUID NITROGEN TANK, THE LAB IS “COMPLETE”! Thank you so much to the incomparable Sandi Jo Terpack (fun fact: named P7C3) and CAND administrators for facilitating a remarkable lab launch! Another fun fact: we just learned that our confocal is in a Faraday cage. Can we do anything with this information besides fail to receive cell phone reception while imaging? And no, we will not patch clamp mTOR-treated anything. No mTOR in the Sanders Lab!

**January 27, 2024:** Vaibhav DESTROYS his first MSTP module final exam and takes advantage of the sumptuous desks of the lab to take a much deserved nap. Way to go, Vaibhav!

**January 25, 2024:** Team Nikon installs the Sanders Lab’s first microscope, a CSU-W1 SoRa, ahead of schedule. The lab quickly crushes the diffraction limit using a classic cell line created by David in 2012 (DS9 tau aggregate HEK293 cells)!
https://x.com/DavidWSanders2/status/1750928003796799582?s=20

January 23, 2024: After herculean efforts by (seemingly) dozens of people, DS-2019 visa documents are finally delivered to the lab’s first two postdoctoral scholars, Grisha Sultanakhmetov and Yasmeen Khan. Next step? These intrepid souls must navigate the complexities of their local embassies and find their way to the beautiful oasis that is Dallas, Texas.

January 10, 2024: David quickly falls out of love with the lab’s inherited P.O.S. centrifuge and throws it in the garbage. Burn in Hell, you cursed device! Throw back: https://x.com/DavidWSanders2/status/1722022024237756565?s=20

**January 2, 2024:** The Sanders Lab welcomes its first rotation student, Vaibhav Bommareddy, who journeys far from the mystical land of the medical scientist training program (MSTP) at UT Southwestern. He embraces the challenge of tackling both bench work and a daunting regimen of med school classes simultaneously. Pray for Vaibhav!

December 14, 2023: David is excited to be appointed to the Genetics, Development, and Disease (GDD) graduate program at UT Southwestern as a full-time faculty member! FYI: students do not have to be affiliated with GDD or CMB to rotate in the Sanders lab. Go umbrellas!

December 12, 2023: Our cell culture room is fully operational! Favorite cell lines are thawed for expansion and freeze down. David feels relevant again!

December 8, 2023: Michael defeats David at generating a superior Bradford standardization curve, despite only learning how to pipette three days previously. David is already irrelevant. He sulks.

**December 1, 2023:** We are excited to welcome our first research scientist, Michael Jimenez, to the lab! Michael did his undergraduate studies at Texas A&M and hopes to learn everything he can about molecular biology. David can’t wait to teach this electrical engineer a bit about the messiness of cell biology.

November 30, 2023: David is thrilled to join the Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) graduate program at UT Southwestern as a full-time faculty member. He is even more excited that the lab can now officially take rotation students! Please come. We are lonely. :)

November 27, 2023: David is excited to join the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine (CRSM) at UT Southwestern! The lab looks forward to many productive collaborations with its cross-disciplinary faculty.

**November 7, 2023:** First packages have arrived! And we inherited our first piece of barely functional lab equipment! This item, a centrifuge of uncertain place and time, requires a three-step process to open. Fail? It chides the user with a loud "incorrect answer" buzz. Further, the user must slam the lid for it to close. Clearly, David is in love with this weathered machine. For he is a weathered machine.

October 30, 2023: David, Mel, and their fur family arrive safely in Dallas! They quickly inflate the finest Target air mattress they can (barely) afford then experience horrible back pain. Bell and Olive (cats) have declared war on each other. Peace summits are scheduled.

October 27, 2023: David and Mel are Texas-bound with two cats, two dogs, and all the essentials they could pack into their Toyota Camry. Will he survive the journey and start his own lab? Or will Mel set him on a grueling pace with meager rations before he perishes of a freak snakebite while out hunting coffee from a rest stop? Stay tuned!

October 16, 2023: David was happy to contribute to this exciting paper demonstrating that condensate interfaces can accelerate protein aggregation! Also cool to see a sharp threshold concentration for polyQ aggregation in living human cells! We are not done with SQSTM1. PB-Domainia to commence in Dallas!
https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00645-8

October 12, 2023: You heard it here first: manganese is not a divalent cation you can trust. It’s pretty much just magnesium spelled wrong. Now magnesium is trustworthy. Simple. Pure. Would never ruin the final days of David’s postdoc in the Brangwynne Lab. Unlike some cations.