Mark Slabodnick

General Interests

"The diversity of organisms that fills the world has always fascinated me. Both for large multicellular organisms like an oak tree, an elephant, or a human as well as single-celled organisms like paramecium or dinoflagellate, there are seemingly endless forms and shapes that they can take. In my lab I use the understudied unicellular organism Stentor coeruleus as a model to study how these amazing cells are able to generate, and regenerate, their complex anatomy. Even though they are just one cell, S. coeruleus can be up to 1 millimeter in length and can be seen without the aid of a microscope. Even more amazing is that when the cell is injured, or even physically cut in half, they can fully regenerate and replace any of the missing structures with incredible precision. We use a mixture of cell and molecular biology as well as genetics to investigate the genes required to build, and regenerate these amazing cells."

Years at Knox: 2020 to present

Education

Ph.D., Biology, 2014, University of California, San Francisco

B.S., Biology, 2007, Ohio State University

Teaching Interests

Cell Biology, Microscopy, Molecular Biology, and Genetics

Selected Professional Accomplishments

Honors/Grants

NIH F32 Fellowship-NIGMS F34GM119348, 2016-2018

ARCS Fellowship, UC, San Francisco, 2011-2013

College of the Arts and Sciences Honors Scholarship, Ohio State University, 2006

TELR Research on Research Fellowshop, Ohio State University, 2005

Publications

Slabodnick, M. M., Ruby, J.G., Reiff, S.B., Swart, E. C., Gosai, S., Prabakaran, S., Witkowska, E., Larue, G.E., Fisher, S., Freeman Jr., R.M., Gunawardena, J., Chu, W., Stover, N.A., Gregory, B.D., Nowacki, M., Derisi, J., Roy, S.W., Marshall, W.F., Sood, P. The Macronuclear Genome of Stentor coeruleus Reveals Tiny Introns in a Giant Cell. Current Biology 27,569-575 (2017). 

Slabodnick, M. M. & Marshall, W. F. Stentor coeruleus. Current Biology 24, R783-R784 (2014).

Slabodnick, M. M., Ruby, J.G., Dunn, J.G., Feldman, J.L., Derisi, J.L., Marshall, W.F. The Kinase Regulator Mob1 Acts as a Patterning Protein for Stentor Morphogenesis. PLoS Biology 12, e1001861 (2014).

Slabodnick, M., Prevo, B., Gross, P., Sheung, J. & Marshall, W. Visualizing Cytoplasmic Flow During Single-cell Wound Healing in Stentor coeruleus. Journal of Visualized Experiments e50848-e50848 (2013). doi:10.3791/50848

Majumder, S., Slabodnick, M., Pike, A., Marquardt, J. & Fisk, H. A. VDAC3 regulates centriole assembly by targeting Mps 1 to centrosomes. Cell Cycle 11,3666-3678 (2012).

Presentations

Triangle Cutoskeleton Meeting, 2019

International Congress of Protistology, 2013

FASEB Ciliate Molecular Biology Conference, 2013

The American Society for Cell Biology, 2012

Gordon Research Conference, Plant and Microbial Cytoskeleton, 2012

The American Society for Cell Biology, 2011