Kevin Roach

Kevin grew up on the foothills of the Columbia Gorge in Skamania County, WA and spent most of his time running about in the woods causing trouble with his brothers. His family moved to Camas, WA in time for him attend middle school and graduate from high school there. Kevin graduated from the University of Washington with a BS in Biochemistry.

While attending the UW, Kevin worked in Dr. Mary-Claire King’s lab. His research work there was focused on identifying novel mutations in BRCA1, BRCA2, and CHK2 by MLPA. The project was a part of a larger effort to assess hereditary breast cancer risk in women that had wild type results from sequencing BRCA1, BRCA2, and CHK2. After graduating, Kevin returned to Dr. King’s lab as a technician working to identify novel genes associated with schizophrenia.

Kevin is currently a graduate student in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Kevin is working on his thesis project in the Malik Lab. The project revolves around the evolution of centromere protein C, CENP-C. CENP-C is an inner kinetochore protein that shows signs of positive selection in the primate lineage. The first stop is to experimentally determine what is the function of the changes in CENP-C. Kevin is also attempting to discern the cause of the positive selection. According to the “centromere drive hypothesis” meiotic drive during female gametogenesis maybe the cause of the positive selection in this centromere binding proteins. CENP-C also interacts with a protein, IPC0, produced by herpes virus so a host pathogen interaction could also be driving this positive selection.

When not in class or the lab, Kevin and Amanda, his wife, enjoy taking their daughter Caitlin to the park. Kevin watches too much college football and soccer but he tries to spend as much time as he can find playing soccer, running, biking and hiking around the Puget Sound. Riding his motorcycle through the Cascades is a special treat on sunny days. When Kevin can get to a locale with warmer water he also likes to scuba dive.