New Senior Editor Amy MacQueen joins GENETICS

Amy MacQueen
Senior Editor, Genome Integrity and Transmission

Amy MacQueen has a long-standing interest in the molecular mechanisms that facilitate the unique chromosome dynamics of meiosis. After substantial training in classical genetic and cytological approaches in Drosophila as an undergraduate in Dr. Tulle Hazelrigg’s lab at Columbia University, she turned to C. elegans for her PhD research. Working in Dr. Anne Villeneuve’s lab at Stanford University, Amy credits an elegant forward genetics screen developed by Anne, tremendous cytology offered by the worm germline, and brilliant colleagues in the Villeneuve lab with helping her identify several key trans-acting factors required for homologous chromosome pairing in C. elegans meiocytes. Her thesis research also identified a critical role for cis-acting chromosome domains in coordinating a mechanism of pairing establishment with one that fortifies and maintains homolog alignment—the latter involving assembly of an elaborate, meiosis-specific chromosome structure called the synaptonemal complex (SC). As a Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Shirleen Roeder’s lab at Yale University, MacQueen discovered cellular pathways in S. cerevisiae meiotic cells that ensure SC assembly is prevented until earlier chromosome pairing events have successfully occurred. MacQueen joined Wesleyan University’s Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department in 2009, initially funded by an NIH Pathway to Independence Award. Her lab uses powerful molecular genetic, biochemical, and cytological approaches in conjunction with high- and super-resolution microscopy to study the molecular architecture and dynamic properties of budding yeast SC, as well as the functional and spatial relationship(s) between SC structure and meiotic recombination machinery.

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