Mentor: J. Andrew Pospisilik, Ph.D.

Research Focus: m6A RNA methylation-dependent regulation at endogenous retrovirus loci

Experience: Andrea is completing her doctoral research investigating how RNA methylation and DNA methylation interact in vivo using models, molecular biology, sequencing and data analysis techniques. She has additional experience through the Graduate School as a curriculum committee member, where she participated in curriculum development and gained experience teaching in the K–12 setting. Before joining Van Andel Institute Graduate School, Andrea served in the U.S. Army as a commissioned officer. She held various roles in Operations, Planning, Leadership, Human Resources and provided liaison support to federal, state and local agencies. She has experience with Microsoft, BioRender, GraphPad Prism, Adobe, RStudio and 10x Genomics Loupe Browser.

Undergraduate Institution: Michigan State University

Master’s Degree Institution: Michigan State University

Hometown: Portage, Michigan

Publications

*Completed during time as a VAI graduate student

*Meng Y, Wang G, He H, Lau KH, Hurt A, Bixler B, Parham A, Jin S, Xu X, Vasquez K, Pfeifer G, Szabó PE. 2022. Z DNA is remodelled by ZBTB43 in prospermatogonia to safeguard the germline genome and epigenome. Nat Cell Biol 24(7):1141–1153.

*Yang C H, Fagnocchi L, Apostle S, Wegert V, Casaní Galdón S, Landgraf K, Panzeri I, Dror E, Heyne S, Wörpel T, Chandler DP, Lu D, Yang T, Gibbons E, Guerreiro R, Bras J, Thomasen M, Grunnet LG, Vaag AA, Gillberg L, Grundberg E, Conesa A, Körner A, Triche T Jr, Lempradl A, DeBruine Z, Wolfrum E, Madaj Z, Gruber T, Grimaldi B, Parham A, McDonald M, Nadeau J, Polyak I, Khoo C, Lary C, Gluckman P, Karnani N, Carey D, Loos R, Seifert G, Pospisilik JA. 2022. Independent phenotypic plasticity axes define distinct obesity sub types. Nat Metab 4(9):1150–1165.