September 2024:
Welcome to new Master’s student Kayla and new undergrad Caden!
August 2024:
Jarrod and Monica return from their internships. Welcome back!
June 2024:
Demetrius, Jeffrey and Gilberto join the lab. Welcome!
Lots of fun science adventures at the annual meeting of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in Anaheim. Great posters presentations by Luis, Monica, Thilini, Joseane and Caitlyn! Joseane also had an oral presentation.
Can you recognize the Disney theme?
May 2024:
Welcome to our newest lab member, Grace, who will be volunteering in the lab, and to new grad student Ariel!
We’re starting to gear up for ASMS next month. Lots of posters in the works!
March 2024:
March 1st was busy! Caitlyn and Luis did a great job presenting at the S3 student symposium, and then the San Diego team gathered for a beach bonfire and pizza. As a follow-up from lab meeting’s fire extinguisher training, we made sure to fully extinguish the fire before leaving the beach!
PhD candidate Zongyuan Liu successfully defended his dissertation. Congratulations Dr. Liu!
February 2024:
We’re starting to run test samples on our new LC-MS. The lab is mostly organized and unpacked. Thank you to Jordan for all his hard work on the inventory!
Welcome to our new postdoc Guilherme!
January 2024:
Monica, Jarrod and Joseane join us in San Diego.
New undergrad Jordan joins the lab. Welcome!
Supplies and equipment arrive from Oklahoma. So many boxes! Thank you to Giovana, Caitlyn and Luis for getting everything unpacked.
Big review published in Methods by first-author Jarrod, with contributions from lab members Rohit, Jacob, Nathan, Randy, Thilini, Joseane, Horvey, Zongyuan and Monica. This review focuses on LC-MS tools for quantification of several common microbiome metabolites. Read it here!
November/December 2023:
New graduate student Luis and lab manager Giovana join the lab. Welcome!
Danya, Jarrod and Rebecca’s first author paper in ACS Infectious Diseases is published, with contributions from lab members Shelley, London, Kate, Michael, Mitchelle, Mahbobeh, Ekram, Miranda, Morgan, Sayre and Zongyuan. An important finding: urine is better to differentiate Trypanosoma cruzi infection from controls, and these changes don’t renormalize after benznidazole treatment. Read it here!
October 2023:
New mass spec!
Zongyuan’s first author-paper in Nature Communications is published, with our collaborators at Baylor College of Medicine and contributions from current and former lab members Rebecca, Kate, Danya, Shelley and Ekram. Major finding: benznidazole treatment doesn’t restore cardiac metabolism (after 56 days of recovery). Better restoration is achieved when combining benznidazole with a therapeutic vaccine. Read it here!
August 2023:
The lab opens at San Diego State University.
July 2023:
Congratulations to Mahbobeh- now Dr. Lesani- on successfully passing her thesis defense!
We had a lab dinner party to celebrate:
June 2023:
Monica, Jarrod, Jacob, Zongyuan, Azadeh and Mahbobeh all present at ASMS. Lots of new lab papers this month too: Azadeh’s PLoS Pathogens Pearl (read it here) and Monica’s very first first-author paper on chronic wound and bandage metabolomics, in JASMS, in collaboration with the Ibberson lab. Read it here!
The lab will be moving to San Diego State University in August. It’s been a great 6 years at OU. Leaving great friends and colleagues is hard, but we’re also excited for new opportunities!
April 2023:
Congratulations to Jarrod and Monica on passing their general exam!
Congratulations to Dr. Jacob Haffner who defended his PhD. He’ll be staying in the lab a bit to wrap up projects before he moves on to great things!
March 2023:
Laura-Isobel presents at the Gordon Research Conference on Tropical Infectious Diseases and at the UCSD Center for Microbiome Innovation International Microbiome Meeting.
February 2023:
Welcome to our new postdoc, Godwin!
January 2023:
Welcome to new postdoc Thilini, who will be working jointly with us and with the Cichewicz lab, and to new undergrads Ankit and Taylor!
Laura-Isobel presents a virtual seminar at Harvard.
Re-starting a lab tradition: the post-holiday party!
December 2022:
Welcome to new postdoc Joseane!
Nathan officially joins the group as a PhD student. Welcome!
November 2022:
Welcome to the lab’s new research coordinator, Randy!
Caitlyn presents a poster at ABRCMS.
October 2022:
Welcome to rotation student Shakya!
Congratulations to Jarrod and Monica on passing their prelim exam!
September 2022:
Welcome to rotation student Nathan!
Another R01, in collaboration with the Cichewicz lab here at OU, is funded. In it, we seek to re-think how natural product libraries are designed for high throughput screening.
We had a lab pizza party. A few lab alumni dropped by too!
August 2022:
Congratulations to undergrad Caitlyn who won best presentation prize in her category at the NSURP final presentation day!
Welcome Micah, who will be performing Honors undergraduate research in the lab this fall!
Congratulations to Mahbobeh on her first-author publication in Metabolites, and to contributing author Camil! Read it here.
July 2022:
Our paper in collaborations with the Yang lab is published in Analytical Chemistry, using single-cell metabolomics to reveal bystander effects of T. cruzi infection. Key lab members who contributed were Jacob and Shelley. Read it here!
We are thrilled to receive NIH R01 support for our work on Chagas disease treatment, for the next five years!
June 2022:
June was a busy conference month: Laura-Isobel presented at the Gordon Research Conference on host-parasite interactions, the Gordon Research Conference on Microbiology of the Built Environment, and gave an invited seminar at the University of Lisbon.
Danya’s paper mapping metabolic changes in the lung during influenza virus infection is published in mSystems, with co-authors from our group . Read it here!
May 2022:
Commencement and Convocation: Congratulations Dr. Danya Dean and Mitchelle Katemauswa, College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Senior in Natural Sciences award!
Mitchelle’s senior poster session was initially derailed by a tornado watch, so she gave her poster in our office, with some display help from Danya:
Thankfully, everyone stayed safe, and Mitchelle got to present to the whole department on Friday: 
April 2022:
More great lab successes! Mahbobeh receives the Harrison L. Chance Scholarship and a George L. and Cleo Cross Endowed Scholarship from the department of microbiology and plant biology.
Laura-Isobel receives the OU Award for Excellence in Research in the Natural Sciences.
Laura-Isobel gives a lot of talks: Northeastern University, Drexel University, ASBMB conference – all in the span of one week!
Visiting graduate student Jacob also traveled a lot, presenting a talk at the AABA meeting (and winning a presentation prize!) and then a poster at SAA.
Undergraduate Henri presents at the OU Undergraduate Research Day.
Congratulations to Morgan and Jacob on successfully passing the general exam!
Congratulations to Danya – now Dr. Dean – on successfully passing her thesis defense!
Dinner with the lab to celebrate Danya’s defense.
Welcome to new postdoc Azadeh!
March 2022:
Lots of lab successes to celebrate this month:
Congratulations to Mitchelle who has been named the OU College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Senior in Natural Sciences!
Congratulations to Mitchelle for receiving an OU Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program scholarship!
Congratulations to Mahbobeh for receiving a Graduate Student Senate Research Grant and to Jacob for receiving a Graduate Student Senate Travel Grant!
Rohit presents a flash talk at the Missouri Valley branch of the American Society for Microbiology and Laura-Isobel presents at the Gordon Research Conference on Marine Natural Products.
Danya deposits her PhD thesis!
Collaborative R01 with Baylor College of Medicine is funded. This will support part of our research for the next 5 years.
Celebrating all these successes and our first in-person lab meeting in a very long time with some pizza.
February 2022:
Laura-Isobel is on Reddit doing an AMA! Check it out here.
Laura-Isobel gives a virtual seminar at UT San Antonio.
Laura-Isobel gives a seminar for the Oklahoma ACS division.
January 2022:
Our paper on quantitative swab-based analyses is published in JASMS, with co-first authors Mitchelle (undergrad) and Ekram (former postdoc), with co-author graduate students Zongyuan, Mahbobeh, Adwaita and Danya. Read it here!
Filming for our JoVE paper takes place. Stay tuned for a video protocol featuring Danya, Mitchelle and Jacob.
December 2021:
Welcome to new graduate students Jarrod and Monica!
Congratulations to undergraduate London who is graduating this semester!
November 2021:
When you can’t go to ASMS, ASMS comes to you! Lab watch party for the metabolomics session.
October 2021:
Our collaborative paper with Vicky Anderson and the Cichewicz lab is now published. Read it here!
Jarrod and Sayre join the lab for their 2nd rotation. Welcome!
Morgan, Mahbobeh and Zongyuan’s Methods in Enzymology book chapter is now live. Read it here!
Busy month! Laura-Isobel presents at Baylor College of Medicine, Vanderbilt, the WoodsHole Molecular Parasitology meeting and at the International Lipidomics Society annual conference and 7th Lipidomics Forum.
Danya and Gautham’s paper is published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Read it here!
September 2021:
Welcome to our rotation student Monica Ness and to new undergrad Henry Diaba!
Morgan passes her preliminary exam. Congratulations!
Danya and Mitchelle present at NOBCChE.
Aug 2021:
Welcome back to all our fall semester undergraduate students!
Zongyuan and Rebecca’s review is published in Current Opinion in Microbiology. Read it here!
Lots of conferences! Laura-Isobel presents virtually at ACS ChemBio Connections, the Oklahoma Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunity COBRE 1st Annual Oklahoma Early-Stage Investigator Symposium and the IUPAC/Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition – all within two days!
July 2021:
Congratulations to Danya, who received a National Tuition Assistance Scholarship from the Bahamas.
Laura-Isobel gives a virtual seminar at the NIH.
June 2021:
Laura-Isobel gives a virtual seminar for Colorado State University’s Center for Metabolism of Infectious Disease (C4MInD).
OU highlights Laura-Isobel’s Burroughs-Wellcome award in a press release. Read it here.
The lab is finally able to get together in-person again with an outdoor BBQ.
May 2021:
A strong start to the month of May, with Adwaita passing her MSc thesis defense and Zongyuan passing his general exam on the same day. Congratulations to both!
Rebecca passes her general exam, making it three for three in the lab this semester. Congratulations Rebecca!
Good news for May continue, with Adwaita’s paper on the metabolome of cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions being published in Pathogens. Read it here.
The lab was well represented at the departmental student awards: Danya received the Lloyd E. Swearingen Scholarship and Mitchelle received the Nicholas Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations both!
Laura-Isobel “visits” the Medical College of Wisconsin for a virtual seminar.
New preprint, led by visiting grad student Jacob, in collaboration with the Lewis lab and the Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research, on the core human fecal metabolome: chemical features shared in the feces across degrees of industrialization, as well as industrialization-associated chemical alterations. Read it here.
The good news keep coming! Laura-Isobel was selected as a Burroughs Wellcome Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases. This will support some very exciting work on determinants of infectious disease tropism. Stay tuned!
April 2021:
Congratulations to Mahbobeh for successfully passing her General Exam. She is now a PhD candidate. Exciting times ahead!
Our collaborative paper with
Danya receives the OU Cleo Cross International Student Scholarship . Congratulations!
March 2021:
Check out the video Laura-Isobel made for the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program interview process, a 5 min summary of our lab’s method and perspective. Watch it here.
Adwaita’s review on metabolism during kinetoplastid infections is published in Infection and Immunity. Read it here.
Danya is awarded the OU “We see you!” Award. Congratulations!
Laura-Isobel presents a seminar (virtually) at New England Biolabs.
The lab is awarded another R21. Thanks to everyone who generated the preliminary data! Stay tuned for exciting translational biomarker findings.
Mahbobeh receives two scholarships from the OU Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, the Kenneth and Joye Harwell scholarship and the Lois Pfiester Scholarship. Congratulations!
Laura-Isobel is highlighted by Infection and Immunity as “a future leader in the field of host-microbe interactions”.
February 2021:
Laura-Isobel’s review on determinants of tropism is published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. Read it here!
January 2021:
Lots of new lab members: undergraduates Rohit and Miranda and Data Science graduate student Tarini join the team. Welcome!
Laura-Isobel presents a virtual seminar at Michigan State University.
Getting the lab restarted after Christmas break. Time to thaw some cells!
December 2020:
Chaoyi passes her MSc defense. Congratulations!
Graduate student Morgan Harris joins the group. Welcome!
November 2020:
Laura-Isobel presents a virtual seminar at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Rebecca joins the group as research assistant. Welcome!
October 2020:
Laura-Isobel presents a keynote at the German Metabolomics Society (DGMet) meeting.
Morgan joins us for her second rotation. Welcome!
September 2020:
Undergraduate London Klechka joins the group. Welcome!
We are now on Instagram! Follow us at @_mccalllab.
Laura-Isobel presents a poster via zoom for the Metabolomics Association of North America conference and a talk for the Thermo Fisher Mass Spectrometry Users’ Meeting.
New preprint, in collaboration with
Danya and Mitchelle present posters at NOBCChE.
Zongyuan passes his preliminary exam. Congratulations!
August 2020:
Laura-Isobel is selected as one of C&E News’ Talented 12: the “dozen young rising stars who are using chemical know-how to change the world”: https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/CENs-Talented-12/98/i31 . Our research is profiled in C&E News magazine: https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/infectious-disease/Laura-Isobel-McCall/98/i31.
Danya, Adwaita and collaborator Vicky (from Dr. Cichewicz’s group) all present at the first annual GNPS User meeting, with Laura-Isobel serving as organizing committee member and session chair. Re-watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HMjK4Js8xI (at 2:31:30).
Two of the tools we routinely use and whose development we contributed to are published in Nature Methods: ReDU and Feature-based molecular networking.
July 2020:
Graduate student Mahbobeh Lesani joins the group. Welcome!
Danya and Gautham’s preprint on chemical cartography in chronic Chagas disease is out on bioRxiv. Read it here.
New review on lung metabolomics out in PLoS Pathogens. Read it here.
The lab’s new paper on 3D mapping of host-parasite-microbiome interactions is now published in Science Advances. Led by postdoc Ekram Hossain, in collaboration with the Sankaranarayanan lab and with Diane Thomas and Sharon Lostracco-Johnson from UCSD CDIPD. Many many lab members have contributed to this paper: graduate students Danya Dean, Chaoyi Wu and Adwaita Parab; lab manager Shelley Kane; undergraduate Mitchelle Katemauswa; former undergraduates Karina Flores, Camil Gosmanov, Danyang Li; former graduate rotation students: Yiming Zhang and Stephanie Hayes. Read it here.
Postdoc Ekram moves on to new and exciting things as Staff Scientist at Covance. Good luck! It was a pleasure working with you.
June 2020:
Great representation from the lab at ASMS reboot! Posters by Ekram, Adwaita and Chaoyi, and a talk by Danya.
May 2020:
Lab members are busy recording their talks for the virtual ASMS conference. Attend the conference from the comfort of your couch and check out our research!
Adwaita’s preprint is on bioRxiv, check it out here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.094649v1
April 2020:
Keeping the spirits up while working remotely! Lots of manuscript writing in the works, stay tuned.
March 2020:
Rotation student Zongyuan Liu decides to join the lab for his PhD. Lots of exciting work ahead!
February 2020:
NIH R21 awarded, which will enable us to progress our candidate Chagas disease treatment approach (discovered by chemical cartography!) through safety and efficacy evaluations in pre-clinical animal models!
CHEM5170/5270 2019 class project paper is published in Metabolites! In it, we show how backyard soil metabolite profiles are influenced by local phenomena and can reveal human behavioral patterns: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/10/3/86
January 2020:
2nd annual lab post-Christmas party at Hideaway pizza:
Welcome to the new decade, and welcome to Zongyuan Liu who is joining us for a graduate rotation!
December 2019:
Laura-Isobel is a guest on the Future Tech podcast. Check it out!
November 2019:
Busy month:
New paper out in Nature Microbiology, on the impact of urbanization on the house built environment chemical and microbial profile. Check it out here (or here for access)! It also got some coverage in the popular press: here, here, here, here, here (in German!) and here.
Danya presents her work at NOBCChE in St. Louis.
Laura-Isobel presents at ASTMH.
October 2019:
Graduate student Yiming Zhang joins the lab for his second rotation. Welcome!
Chaoyi passes her preliminary exam. Congratulations!
Laura-Isobel presents at the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center.
September 2019:
Danya passes her preliminary exam. Congratulations!
The McCall lab has received a pilot project award from the Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases, to apply chemical cartography to the study of influenza virus infection. Another exciting biological system in which we will explore the relationship between metabolite location and pathogenesis!
Laura-Isobel presents at the University of Texas Medical Branch Center for Tropical Diseases.
Graduate students Lindsie Martin and Stephanie Hayes join us for their first rotation. Welcome!
Annual back-to-school party at Buffalo Wild Wings:
August 2019:
Classes resume. Welcome new students and welcome back, returning Sooners!
Danya and Adwaita present posters at the OK-WISE conference.
July 2019:
Laura-Isobel presents the lab’s exciting systematic analysis of gastrointestinal Chagas disease at San Diego State University.
Fall 2018 CHEM 5170/5180 and CHEM5270/5280 class project paper is published in Building and Environment. Students designed the project, collected the samples, extracted molecules, performed LC-MS analysis, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. Active learning in action! Check it out here.
June 2019:
We hear a lot of talk about the engineering marvels of Sci-Fi, but what about the biology that inspires alien species? Star Trek includes beautiful examples of mutualism and parasitism, but what would happen if Picard developed an allergy to planetary antigens? All these questions and more were addressed by Laura-Isobel at SoonerCon 28.
May 2019:
May’s been busy, and it’s not even half over! McCall lab is now on twitter. Follow us: @LabMccall
Undergraduate student Adwaita Parab successfully submits her senior thesis and receives her BSc. Congratulations and looking forward to having you back as a graduate student in the fall!
Laura-Isobel gives a “Mornings with the Professor” lecture for the OU Lifelong Learning Institute, focusing on the real-life parasites that inspired aliens in the Star Trek series.
End-of-year posters from freshmen Mitchelle Katemauswa and Camil Gosmanov. Great work guys!
April 2019:
Graduate student Kristyn Hoffman is visiting from Baylor College of Medicine for 10 days, to learn our chemical cartography methods. Welcome!
End-of-year events begin with the LMAMR Spring Gathering at Lake Thunderbird, followed by the McNair Scholars banquet, where undergraduate Karina Flores’ hard work was acknowledged. Keep up the good work!
The McCall lab was well represented at the ACS Pentasectional Meeting. Undergrads Gautham and Karina Flores, and graduate student Chaoyi Wu all presented posters. Dr. McCall chaired the morning biochemistry session and presented some of the 3D GI tract data. Congratulations to Karina for her undergraduate presenter honorable mention prize!
March 2019:
Rotation student Chaoyi Wu decides to join the lab for her PhD. Looking forward to the next five years!
Dr. McCall co-chairs the 2019 Gordon Research Seminar on Tropical Infectious Diseases, with a keynote presentation by Dr. Manu Prakash on frugal science. Great science, great networking, and great career advice. Thank you everyone who attended and made this possible!
February 2019:
The lab holds its first annual post-Christmas party, with pizza and ice cream.
January 2019:
It’s official! Rotation student Danya Dean joins the lab. The lab also grows by two more people, with FYRE students Mitchelle Katemauswa and Camil Gosmanov. Chaoyi Wu also joins us for a rotation. Welcome!
October 2018:
Graduate student Danya Dean joins us for her second rotation. Welcome!
September 2018:
Undergraduate researcher Gautham joins the lab. Welcome!
August 2018:
Karina Flores re-joins the lab after an exciting summer doing field research on avian malaria in Costa Rica. Welcome back!
Undergraduate researcher Adwaita Parab has been awarded a Mentored Research Award from OU. Congratulations!
July 2018:
Goodbye lunch for Danyang at the OU Innovation Hub food trucks. Thanks for all your hard work over the summer!
Visiting student Danyang Li presents her summer research project at the OU Curiosity to Creativity Symposium. Great job Danyang!
June 2018:
The lab more than doubled in size this month, with visiting student Danyang Li from BNU, MPBIO undergrad Adwaita Parab, and lab manager/RA Shelley Kane joining the team. We held our first lab meeting:
Also, check out this article in Nature on the benefits of joining a brand-new lab, including big new ideas and strong PI commitment to lab member success: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05381-w. We definitely strive to create such an environment!
May 5th 2018:
Undergraduate researcher Karina Flores has been accepted into the OU McNair Scholars Program. Congratulations!
The lab participates in the Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research spring gathering BBQ at Lake Thunderbird.
April 5th 2018:
Laura-Isobel presents a public seminar on “Aliens among us:
From Star Trek to Toxoplasma and Trypanosoma” at the Norman Science Cafe.
April 5th 2018:
The lab’s first 100% made-at-OU publication is now live! A short review on metabolomics of host-pathogen interactions, with rotation student Sydney Newsom. Check it out here!
March 24th 2018:
Starting with a bang! Successfully finished LC-MS analysis of our first set of samples, and it was a big one: 680 samples, in positive and negative mode. We dream big in the McCall lab…
March 13th 2018:
Our paper on the Chagas disease microbiome is published online. Check it out!
March 5th 2018:
Just finished running ~600 samples on our new instrument. Lots of fresh data to analyze!
February 19th 2018:
Karina Flores starts working in the lab. She’ll be learning cell culture skills and working on ways to lyse T. cruzi for metabolomics sample preparation. Welcome!
February 16th 2018:
Training complete, we’re ready to roll!
February 13th 2018:
Three days of training by Thermo Fisher, starting now!
February 8th 2018:
We ran our first test samples on our new QE+ and Vanquish LC system. And it worked! Here’s our baby:
All it needs now is a name…
January 30th 2018:
And so it begins…
January 25th 2018:
Parasites are in the house! Cell culture stocks have arrived safe and sound from San Diego, along with 32 boxes of samples ready to be analyzed.
December 21st 2017:
Ekram Hossain joins the lab as postdoctoral fellow. Welcome to Oklahoma!
November 9th 2017:
Renovations have begun! Target end date is November 30th. We’re hoping to have all our equipment delivered before Christmas!