Lab Personnel

Stephen J. Tapscott, MD, Ph. D. Full Member and Lab Head
Dr. Tapscott obtained an MD and Ph. D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also completed medical internship and neurology residency. He completed postdoctoral studies with Dr. Harold Weintraub at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he is currently a Member in the Division of Human Biology and a Professor of Neurology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the regulation of gene expression during cell differentiation using myogenesis and neurogenesis as model systems. In addition, his lab has active programs in the role of triplet repeats in the genome, genomic rearrangements in cancer, and cellular and genetic therapies of muscular dystrophies. Dr. Tapscott is on the scientific advisory boards of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Brain Tumor Association, and the Hereditary Disease Foundation, and is an Associate Editor of Developmental Cell.


Amy Asawachaicharn, Ph. D. candidate Graduate Research Assistant
Amy Asawachaicharn grew up in Thailand and she moved to the United States for High School in 1996. She attended Tulane University for undergraduate studies in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Pharmacology and received a BS in 2003. Amy is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology as well as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Washington. Amy works on a few projects in the Tapscott Lab, but primarily she is trying to identify the molecular basis underlying the pathophysiology of Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). More than 95% of cases of FSHD are associated with a partial deletion in repeated DNA units near the end of chromosome 4; however, the subsequent molecular mechanisms that cause the disease have not been identified.



Yi Cao, Ph. D. Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Yi Cao received a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and completed residency in Laboratory Medicine at the Beijing Medical University in China. After getting a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and M. S. in Statistics from Kansas State University in 2003, Yi joined the Tapscott lab for her postdoctoral studies. She is currently working on the roles of cofactors in regulating gene expression patterning during muscle development. Outside of the lab, Yi enjoys exploring hiking trails with her husband and son.



Sara Georges, Ph. D. Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Sara Georges received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Colorado State University. She joined the Tapscott lab in 2003, and is currently pursuing her interest in the regulation of gene expression via two avenues: modulation of chromatin structure and the role of microRNAs in posttranscriptional gene regulation.


Paula Ladd, Ph. D. Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Paula Ladd received a Ph. D. in 2004 from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN. She is co-mentored by Dr. Stephen Tapscott and Dr. Galina Filippova. Her research interests include understanding the role of chromatin structure on transcriptional regulation, as well as characterizing the transcription control elements at the human fragile X mental retardation gene locus.


Kyle MacQuarrie Graduate Research Assistant
Kyle MacQuarrie graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2003 with a B.S. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and Psychology. He worked for Dr. Jeffrey Macklis at the Massachusetts General Hospital - Harvard Medical School Center for Nervous System Repair for 2 years before coming to the University of Washington as a student in the MSTP program in 2005. He is working on a project that is looking at the differences in the regulation of gene expression between rhabdomyosarcomas and normal muscle. In what free time he can actually find, he enjoys running, fencing sabre, and cooking.


Sarah Mahoney Graduate Research Assistant
Sarah Mahoney is an MSTP student studying myotonic dystrophy - the most common type of muscular dystrophy affecting adults. Mytotonic dystrophy is caused by the expansion of a triplet repeat on chromosome 19. Sarah is interested in gene regulation at the myotonic dystrophy I (DM1) locus. Specifically she is studying insulator function at the DM1 locus and other triplet repeat loci.


Lisa Maves, Ph. D. Associate in Human Biology
Lisa Maves received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington working with Dr. Gerold Schubiger and was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Charles Kimmel at the University of Oregon. She is presently a Muscular Dystrophy Association fellow in the Tapscott lab. Dr. Maves is investigating how homeodomain proteins and chromatin factors regulate the activity of myogenic bHLH proteins. She is using zebrafish as a model developmental system.


Biswajit Paul Undergraduate Student Intern
Biswajit Paul is currently pursuing a Bachelors degree in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biolgy with a Microbiology minor at the UW. He worked at the lab on a one year Howard Hughes Research Internship last year and loved it so much that he returned this summer armed with a NASA Space Grant. He is currently working closely with Lisa Maves on engineering MyoD knockdowns and studying their effects on the expression of muscle-differentiation related genes in zebrafish.


Zejing Wang, Ph. D. Post-Doctoral Associate
Zejing Wang received a degree in medicine from the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in the Molecular and Cellular Program under the co-mentorship of Dr. Rainer Storb & Dr. Stephen Tapscott. Zejing works on finding a curative method for treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which is a lethal X-linked form of muscular dystrophy affecting 1 of 3,500 boys born worldwide. She is testing viral vector-mediated gene therapy approach in preclinical animal models in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Chamberlain at the University of Washington.


Zhihong (Jane) Yang, Ph. D. Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Jane Yang received an M.S. from University of Minnesota at Twin City and Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis. Her research interest is to investigate the molecular mechanisms that prevent differentiation in human embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma cells. Rhabdomyosarcoma, one of the most common solid tumors of childhood, is believed to arise as a result of a regulatory abnormality of the growth and differentiation of myogenic precursor cells. Despite the expression of myogenic basic-helix-loop-helix proteins of the MyoD family, rhabdomyosarcoma cells fail to withdraw from the cell cycle and are unable to differentiate into muscle cells. Therefore it represents an intriguing tumor model for understanding mechanisms of inactivating muscle-specific transcriptional factors.



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