News
Hunter Madison has joined the lab as a PhD student in Biochemistry. Hunter comes from Northeast Missouri and did his undergraduate studies at Truman State University. Welcome Hunter!
Along with Hunter, two students joined our neighbor lab! Lois and YuShao have started their PhD thesis work with Dr. Stephanie Gates!
We had some delicous tacos to celebrate all the new students -->
March 2024
Lab Renovations have completed! We have officially moved into our main lab space, BSL2 cell culture and dry lab space. It took a while but it turned out exceptional. Ernest is modeling our first protein purifications in the lab.
March 2024
Our lab got our first chances to present posters here at Mizzou during the CAFNR Research Symposium! Kelly and Ernest both gave great poster presentations highlighting their work on membrane tethers in autophagy.
Photo contains the joint Gatkom lab members
October 2023
Clara Plass a rising Junior in Biologicla Sciences has joined the lab! Clara is a lover of the outdoors but excited to be stuck in doors learning about molecular biology.
August 2023
Kelly Rockford a Sophomore Biochemistry major has joined the group. She comes to Mizzou from Illinois and is double majoring in Spanish. Kelly is interested in many things biomedical including research at the molecular level. Weclome Kelly!
April 2023
Ernest has joined the lab! He will be conducting his PhD thesis over the next years in our group! Here he is giving his end of rotation talk.
March 2023
New Paper Alert! Structural basis for ATG9A recruitment to the ULK1 complex in mitophagy initiation
Xuefeng Ren led a great study to further our understanding of how Autophagy initiation factors assembly. Giving the first glimpse at how the ULK1 and ATG9 complexes interact
Rotation Student Ernest Okertchiri has brazenly chosen to try out our (budding) lab! Ernest hails from the University of Ghana joining the community of Ghanaian PhD students here within the Department of Biochemistry. Outside of science, Ernest enjoys anime, movies and adjusting to the sunny but cold Midwest weather. Seen here working on his first Negative Stain Electron Microscopy samples ---->
Lab is officially open! As of January 9th 2023.