Tsunghan Yeh brought his PhD thesis work to a close at the end of 2022 with a successful hybrid talk defending his thesis to attendees both in person at UCSB and across the world over Zoom.  He presented his work identifying transdifferentiation regulatory genes by pooled sequencing strategy.  He is looking forward to publication of his thesis work coming soon!

 Title: Feeling the Weight of the World: Gravity sensation and sensory integration in C. elegans

The recent publication on the Skylight Project Interstellar project generated a buzz in the news.  Read the journal article in Acta Astronautica, or a nice summary article in the UCSB Current!  

Epigenetics work was highlighted by Joel in an interview for an article in Discover Magazine. 

Even during our shelter in place the Rothman Lab journal club continues and we enjoy discussing the latest pandemic news, science papers, favorite hats, and our pets' antics!

Former Rothman Lab graduate student Yamila Torres Cleuren along with several other Rothman Lab members recently published their research into genetic pathways for gut development across many species of C. elegans.  This research exposes multiple ways different but related species build their gut thereby providing new insight on the evolutionary process in development. eLife publication

Interstellar travel, light-driven spacecraft, suspended animation. It sounds like the formula for countless science fiction stories, but it could be reality in the not-so-far future if UC Santa Barbara researchers Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman get their way.

“Humanity has dreamed of interstellar flight for more than 100 years. We are working on bringing this dream to reality for all of us, but particularly for the next generation,” said Lubin, a physicist. He leads the UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group, which investigates, among many things, travel in deep space and searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Through the UCSB NASA Project Starlight program, Lubin’s team plans to use laser-propelled miniature spaceships (or “spacechips,” as they have been called) to transport the Rothman Group’s miniature lab animals across vast interstellar distances. These humble microscropic creatures — nematodes and tardigrades — are extremely hardy and can be placed in suspended animation to withstand the cold of space and the rigors of near light-speed travel through the cosmos.