Research Team
Alexei G. Basnakian, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. (Principal Investigator)
Dr. Basnakian is mostly interested in apoptotic endonucleases, the key enzymes regulating irreversible cell death resulting from cell injury and diseases. The nine known endonucleases seem to act by fragmenting DNA independently from each other. Our latest studies show the crosstalk between the endonucleases through several mechanisms. When necessary, tissues can protect themselves by inactivating endonucleases, while in other cases, the endonucleases activate each other and cooperate. By learning the mechanisms of this regulation, we hope to find universal cures for many human diseases including organ failures and cancers.
Charles Matt Burnham (Ph.D. Candidate)
Matt joined Dr. Basnakian’s lab in 2022 with a project aimed to develop methods of isolation and characterization of extracellular circular DNA (eccDNA), which is a suspected product of endonuclease-mediated DNA fragmentation during cell death and potential substrate for the same enzymes. eccDNA can carry functional genes or their parts and thus may potentially regulate the function of the genome, including the one of cancer cells.
Olena Levurdiak (Research Technician)
Olena is a former Registered Nurse from Ukraine. She recently joined the lab and the DNA Damage and Toxicology Core led by Dr. Basnakian as a histology technician. Her responsibilities include tissue processing and embedding, immunostaining for light and fluorescent microscopy, and TUNEL assay. She also performs imaging using epifluorescence and confocal microscopes as well as quantitative image analyses.
Shane Shelton, B.S. (Research Associate)
Shane is an experienced animal technician universally skilled in various handling, breeding, injections, survival surgery, and euthanasia techniques. His responsibilities include breeding knockout mice colonies and performing all of the animal studies conducted in this lab. He also performs various surgeries to create different animal models including kidney injury and cancer models.