Catherine (Katie) Brunton

As a research assistant in the Munger lab, I help with various facets of lab management and mouse-based research that is centered around developmental and computational biology and systems genetics. My responsibilities encompass the following: Overseeing routine lab safety audits and preparing IACUC documents and amendments; sourcing mice and maintaining various breeding schemata to meet research demands; implementing molecular biology assays at the wet bench; preparing and shipping samples for sequencing. My wet bench work has included immunofluorescence (IF) staining and confocal microscopy imaging, mouse embryo dissections and gonad retrieval, tissue fixation for histology, PCR genotyping, and DNA extraction and purification.

Currently, I assist a few different research projects that share a similar overarching goal: To elucidate potential genetic variants that may serve to either protect from or sensitize individuals to the detrimental effects of a specific disease phenotype (variable across projects). To develop and expand upon “dry bench” skills essential to mapping such variants, I attend Data Carpentry courses offered onsite at JAX and am additionally completing graduate courses towards a PSM in Bioinformatics through The University of Maine’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering (GSBSE). Long-term, I look forward to applying and honing computational skills I’ve garnered to sequencing data that I perhaps participated in generating, with the hope of definitively mapping and verifying key disease-associated variants. Outside of work, I love spending time with family, hiking outdoors, and traveling when possible.

Publications

Robertson SJ, Bedard O, McNally KL, Lewis M, Clancy C, Shaia C, Broeckel RM, Chiramel AI, Sturdevant GL, Forte E, Preuss C, Baker CN, Brunton C, Munger SC, Martens C, Holland SM, Rosenthal NA, Best SM. Genetically diverse mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection model clinical variation and cytokine responses in COVID-19. BioRxiv 2021. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.17.460664. [Link]