Vikki Weake

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

Current research in the lab of Dr. Weake focuses on understanding how aging contributes to ocular diseases such as age-related macular degeneration using Drosophila as a model system. The Weake lab use a combination of approaches including transcriptomics, epigenomics, mass spectrometry and imaging to study the mechanisms involved in neuronal aging. Her lab also has an interest in chromatin modifiers with a focus on characterizing novel subunits and types of Gcn5-containing histone acetyltransferase complexes. Please visit our lab website at purdue.ag/weakelab for more information.

Selected Publications:

Stegeman R, Weake VM. Transcriptional Signatures of Aging. J Mol Biol. 2017;429(16):2427-37. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2017.06.019. PubMed PMID: 28684248; PMCID: PMC5662117.

Hall H, Medina P, Cooper DA, Escobedo SE, Rounds J, Brennan KJ, Vincent C, Miura P, Doerge R, Weake VM. Transcriptome profiling of aging Drosophila photoreceptors reveals gene expression trends that correlate with visual senescence. BMC Genomics. 2017;18(1):894. doi: 10.1186/s12864-017- 4304-3. PubMed PMID: 29162050.

Chen X, Leon-Salas WD, Zigon T, Ready DF, Weake VM. A programmable optical stimulator for the Drosophila eye. HardwareX. 2017;2:13-33. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2017.07.001.

Chen X, Hall H, Simpson JP, Leon-Salas WD, Ready DF, Weake VM. Cytochrome b5 protects photoreceptors from light stress-induced lipid peroxidation and retinal degeneration. NPJ Aging Mech Dis. 2017;3:18. doi: 10.1038/s41514-017-0019-6. PubMed PMID: 29214051; PMCID: PMC5712525.

Stegeman R, Spreacker PJ, Swanson SK, Stephenson R, Florens L, Washburn MP, Weake VM. The Spliceosomal Protein SF3B5 is a Novel Component of Drosophila SAGA that Functions in Gene Expression Independent of Splicing. J Mol Biol. 2016;428(18):3632-49. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2016.05.009. PubMed PMID: 27185460; PMCID: PMC5011000.

Ma J, Brennan KJ, D'Aloia MR, Pascuzzi PE, Weake VM. Transcriptome Profiling Identifies Multiplexin as a Target of SAGA Deubiquitinase Activity in Glia Required for Precise Axon Guidance During Drosophila Visual Development. G3 (Bethesda). 2016;6(8):2435-45. doi: 10.1534/g3.116.031310. PubMed PMID: 27261002; PMCID: PMC4978897.

Stephenson R, Hosler MR, Gavande NS, Ghosh AK, Weake VM. Characterization of a Drosophila ortholog of the Cdc7 kinase: a role for Cdc7 in endoreplication independent of Chiffon. J Biol Chem. 2015;290(3):1332-47. doi: 10.1074/jbc.M114.597948. PubMed PMID: 25451925; PMCID: PMC4340381.

Mohan RD, Dialynas G, Weake VM, Liu J, Martin-Brown S, Florens L, Washburn MP, Workman JL, Abmayr SM. Loss of Drosophila Ataxin-7, a SAGA subunit, reduces H2B ubiquitination and leads to neural and retinal degeneration. Genes & development. 2014;28(3):259-72. doi: 10.1101/gad.225151.113. PubMed PMID: 24493646; PMCID: PMC3923968.

Ma J, Weake VM. Affinity-based isolation of tagged nuclei from Drosophila tissues for gene expression analysis. Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE. 2014(85). doi: 10.3791/51418. PubMed PMID: 24686501; PMCID: PMC4158730.

Weake VM, Workman JL. SAGA function in tissue-specific gene expression. Trends Cell Biol. 2012;22(4):177-84. doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2011.11.005. PubMed PMID: 22196215; PMCID: PMC3322277.

Weake VM, Workman JL. SAGA function in tissuespecific gene expression. Trends Cell Biol. 2011. Epub 2011/12/27. doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2011.11.005. PubMed PMID: 22196215.

Washburn MP, Abmayr SM, Workman JL. Post-transcription initiation function of the ubiquitous SAGA complex in tissue-specific gene activation. Genes & development. 2011;25(14):1499-509. doi: 10.1101/gad.2046211. PubMed PMID: 21764853; PMCID: PMC3143940.

Weake VM, Workman JL. Inducible gene expression: diverse regulatory mechanisms. Nat Rev Genet. 2010;11(6):426-37. doi: 10.1038/nrg2781. PubMed PMID: 20421872.