The Spencer Lab has an opening for a postdoc in the area of computational or systems biology. Click here for more information
Spencer Lab Retreat August 2022
Left to right: (Top) Yoa Rong, Scott Lin, Varuna Nangia, Claire Armstrong, Victor Passanisi, Tim Hoffman; (Bottom) Riley Ill, Bri Fernandez, Sabrina Spencer, Lotte Watts
Spencer Lab on a walk during 2022 Lab Retreat in Keystone Colorado
Left to right: (Top) Tim Hoffman, Claire Armstrong, Forrest Shirley, Riley Ill, Varuna Nangia, Victor Passanisi, Yao Rong, (Bottom) Sabrina Spencer, Bri Fernandez, Lotte Watts
Celebrating the acceptance of Mingwei's paper, "Temporal integration of mitogen history in mother cells controls proliferation of daughter cells." Min M, Rong Y, Tian C, Spencer SL. (2020). Science.
Spencer Lab 2018
Members: Alex (left), Mansi, Humza, Sabrina, Chengzhe, Claire, Jordan, Mingwei, Justin, Yao, Chen, and Nikki.
MCF10A cells expressing a CDK2 sensor (green) and mCherry-tagged Histone 2B (red); cells have been immunostained for phosphorylated Rb at Serine 807/811 (blue).
Spencer Lab Members at Spencer Lab Retreat to Keystone, Colorado in August 2019.
Top to bottom: Iain, Justin, Yao, Mingwei, Sabrina, Chen, Jordan, Claire, Humza, Tim, and Chengzhe
Comparison of cell tracking performance from Chengzhe's paper "EllipTrack: A Global Cell-Tracking Pipeline for Hard-to-Track Cells." Tian C, Yang C, Spencer SL. (2019). bioRxiv.
scRNA-seq and RNA FISH revealed elevated expression of Cdc42ep1 in escapees in Chen's paper, "Rapidly induced drug adaptation mediates escape from BRAF inhibition in single melanoma cells." Yang C, Tian C, Hoffman TE, Jacobsen NK, Spencer SL. (2019). bioRxiv.
Spencer lab members on a hike near Dillon, Colorado in August 2019
Left to right: Mingwei, Tim, Sabrina, Claire, Justin, Humza, Yao, Iain, and Jordan.
Using an mCitrine-p21 fusion protein in order to monitor p21 levels compared to CDK2 activity in cells in transient quiescence. Moser J, Miller I, Carter D, Spencer SL. (2018). "Control of the Restriction Point by Rb and p21." PNAS.
The Spencer Lab making dinner at retreat to Keystone, Colorado in August 2019
Left to Right: Yao Rong, Minwei Min, Jordan Schneider, Humza Ashraf, Claire Armstrong, Chen Yang, Tim Hoffman, Justin Moser.
2021 Lab Picnic
Venn diagram of gene sets differentially regulated in five forms of quiescence. Min M, Spencer SL. (2019). "Spontaneously slow-cycling subpopulations of human cells originate from activation of stress-response pathways." PLOS Biology.
Welcome to the Spencer Lab!
Research in the lab is focused on understanding how signaling events control cell fate. Studying these processes in single cells reveals remarkable cell-to-cell variability in response to stimuli, even among genetically identical cells in a uniform environment. We seek to understand the sources and consequences of this heterogeneity in the cellular response to stimuli. The stimuli we study include growth factors, cell stress, and targeted cancer therapeutics. To do this, we develop genetically encoded fluorescent sensors for signaling events of interest. We then use long-term live-cell microscopy and cell tracking to quantify the dynamics of upstream signals and link them to cell fate (proliferation, quiescence, apoptosis, differentiation). Our long-term goal is to understand the normal mechanistic functioning of signaling pathways that control proliferation, to understand how these signals go awry in cancer, and eventually to alter the fate of individual cells.
