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Basic Sciences' McLaughlin wins Whitney fellowship

Dr. Rick McLaughlin, a postdoctoral researcher in basic Sciences, has been awarded a prestigious Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Research Fellowship to study the coevolution of endogenous retroelements in primate genomes and the surveillance system that controls their proliferation. Dr. McLaughlin’s application was one of 22 selected from a nationwide search.

The Whitney Foundation nurtures and supports the careers of promising young scientists in biomedical research and aims to broaden postdoctoral training and experience.

McLaughlin’s proposed work conceptually aligns with his graduate work on the evolutionary rationale of protein architecture in the Ranganathan Lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In his proposed postdoctoral work, McLaughlin aims to test whether retroelements’ evolution or a breakdown in the surveillance system may lead to human diseases such as lupus and other autoimmune disorders. Based on the conceptual promise of this proposal, Dr. McLaughlin, together with his mentor Dr. Harmit Malik, were also recently awarded a $300,000 'Novel Research' grant from the Lupus Research Institute.

“I am sure that Rick's conceptual boldness in his treatment of open biological questions helped his selection. He has already demonstrated incredible technical skill to advance our understanding of how proteins evolve. I am excited about his plans to dissect the genetic arms race within our own genomes,” said McLaughlin’s postdoctoral mentor and former Whitney fellow Dr. Harmit Malik, an evolutionary geneticist in the Basic Sciences Division.