September 22, 2026
Our work with Angela Oliverio’s lab on a record-breaking amoeba is out in Cell! Jess built a protein language model pipeline to assign orthologs across highly divergent species, which let us find unique physical-chemical properties that we think help it survive at 63°C. Covered by The New York Times and many other outlets.
September 19, 2026
Congratulations to Eden and Kara for winning poster awards at the Function without Form workshop!
August 1, 2026
We say goodbye to Caleb, Jacqueline, and Emil - our summer undergrad researchers. We will miss them!
July 29, 2026
Congratulations to Kara, Trevor, Kavindu and Lea, and to lab alumna Karina Guadalupe, on the publication of our GOOSE paper in Nature! Kara and Trevor share first authorship on the work, which introduces a framework for designing disordered proteins to order so that sequence-to-function questions can be asked systematically. Syracuse University wrote it up: A&S Scientists Design Proteins With No Fixed Shape.
June 21 - 26, 2026
Shahar co-chaired the Gordon Research Conference on Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Kara and Jess attended and presented the lab’s work.
June 2, 2026
Congratulations to Jess on her paper in Advanced Science, showing how intramolecular contacts between ubiquilin’s folded and disordered regions shape its structure and function. The work was done in collaboration with our Syracuse colleague Carlos Castañeda and his lab.
August 18, 2025
One year anniversary of the Syracuse University Sukenik Lab! In this time we’ve gotten settled in, opened our new microscopy and tissue culture rooms, and had the team expand. Much more to come!
April 29, 2025
Eduardo officially became the 4th member of the Sukenik lab to graduate with his Ph.D! He furthered the lab studies of IDP ensemble structure, linking structure, composition, and/or function across multiple transcription factors and coactivators. He goes on to join the Strader lab at the Salk Institute.
August 21, 2024
Graduate student Karina successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis and is now Dr. Guadalupe! She is the 3rd graduate of the lab. Karina worked very hard to successfully establish the cell culture and microscopy aspects of the lab.
July 25, 2024
Our incredible PI has joined Syracuse University in New York as a professor and is moving the Sukenik lab there this Fall 2024. We are so happy for the bright future of the Sukenik Lab in NY, but we will miss our beloved mentor so dearly in Merced. We wish Shahar, the lab and his family nothing but the best for their future in NY.
June 23 - 28, 2024
Shahar served as vice-chair during the Gordon Research Conference of Biophysics and Biology of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins which took place in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. He also was given the great honor of delivering the Keynote Address at the student-organized research seminar during the conference.
Feb 20 '24
Our fearless PI, Professor Shahar Sukenik, is UC Merced’s first recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan foundation’s Sloan Research Fellowship. He is one of only 126 recipients across the US and Canada. Shahar credits his success to the amazing grad students who helped him build the lab. It is a very well-deserved award. We are so proud of you, Shahar! Read more here.
Feb 10-14 '24
Grad students Kara and Patrick represented the lab in Philadelphia at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting 2024! Both Kara and Patrick gave flash talks and presented posters. Kara won the Student Research Achievement Award with her poster on “Designing Disordered Proteins for Desiccation Protection.” Go Kara!
Jan 4 '24
New year, new paper! After nearly 2 years of work, David and Karina finally see their paper, Structural biases in disordered proteins are prevalent in the cell, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Congrats to all the authors on this big achievement! Read it here.
Dec 15 '23
Grad students Feng Yu and David Moses have graduated and earned their Ph.D.s! The lab is so proud of all of their hard work over the years. Dr. Feng Yu is now a postdoc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Dr. David C. Moses is now a postdoc in the lab of Keren Lasker at Scripps. We’ll miss our fantastic former grad students, and can’t wait to see what they do next!
Dec 8 '23
The Sukenik Lab won first place in the Chemistry department gingerbread house competition with our theme: “Explosion in the Lab”
Dec 1,4 '23
Graduate students Feng Yu and David Moses successfully defended their doctoral dissertations and are on track to graduate this month with their Ph.D.s! Go David and Feng!
August 31 '23
The lab has an exciting new article out, “Intrinsically disordered regions are poised to act as sensors of cellular chemistry.” Read it here!
May 29 - June 2 '23
Lab members Sofía, Kara, Edie, and PI Shahar attended a WALII conference at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Stanford. After, they went on a retreat with the Boothby lab and the Holehouse lab in Montara, CA!
May 8 '23
The lab has published a new article, Structural Preferences Shape the Entropic Force of Disordered Protein Ensembles. Read it here!
Feb 18-22 '23
Lab members Sofía, David, Eduardo, Feng, and Edie presented their work in San Diego at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting 2023! Feng gave a platform talk this year.
Dec 16 '22
Grad student Patrick joins the ranks by passing his quals!
Nov 30 '22
Grad student Eduardo passed his qualifying exams and is now a Ph.D. candidate! We’re so proud of him and we can’t wait to see what he does next.
Nov 23 '22
The Sukenik lab celebrates Thanksgiving with friends, family, and good food.
Oct 1-4 '22
Grad students Eduardo and Feng head to Carbondale, IL for the 36th Annual Gibbs conference on biothermodynamics to present posters!
Aug 20 '22
Lab members Karina, Nora and Kara went on a rafting trip to celebrate the end of 1st-year training week. Fifth-year, Karina chaperoned the rowdy first years with grace.
Together, the group consisting of grad students and postdocs managed to paddle 10 miles down the Stanislaus River and had a blast in doing so!
Aug 05 '22
The Sukenik and Thompson labs (as well as a few other CCB labs) are moving from the Castle Outpost Labs in Atwater to main campus! The labs’ new home will be in the brand new BSP building!
It’s very bitter sweet to move from Castle, as the Sukenik Lab was born there in 2018. We bid Castle a fond farewell. Forever in our hearts!!
June 25 '22
Shahar and David attended Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) in les Diablerets Switzerland. Both David and Shahar gave talks. And Shahar was voted to be the vice-chair of the next GRC in 2024! Congrats to Shahar! We’re so proud of you.
June 17 '22
Nora led a few science outreach activities at Play Adventures for their summer camp! They were kids aged from 2-10 years old and they all were great scientists. Nora had a blast doing experiments and hopes the kids did too!
May 27 '22
Grad student, Eduardo gave a seminar for the chemistry and biochemistry department on his project that looks at the relationship between transcription factors and ensemble in cells!
May 27 '22
Long-time undergrad lab member, Nora graduated from CSU Stanislaus with a degree in MCB and celebrated with the her favorite people–the Sukenik lab!! She’ll become a grad student in QSB this fall.
May 12 '22
The Sukenik lab along with Wade Zeno traveled to Yosemite to celebrate the semester coming to a close.
May 11 '22
The lab has a new preprint out, Structural biases in disordered proteins are prevalent in the cell. Read it here!
May 11 '22
Our lab hosted Prof. Wade Zeno from USC who gave a seminar on his work on how disordered proteins sense and respond to membrane-curvature.
Apr 4 '22
Shahar gave a department seminar at Johns Hopkins’ Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Mar 29 '22
Shahar was invited to give a seminar at Washington University’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics on the lab’s work.
Mar 24-26 '22
Karina, Sofia, and Shahar travelled to Santa Fe to attend the Extreme Biology RCN meeting. Sofia gave a fantastic talk about how the AtLEA4-5 disordered protein protects from desiccation.
Mar 22 '22
Congrats to Feng for accepting a summer internship at the Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley national lab!
Feb 19-23 22
Shahar gave a talk on Subgroup Saturday in Biopolymers in vivo at BPS!
Feb 19-23 22
Lab members Feng, David, Karina and Nora traveled to San Fransisco to present their work at Biophysical Society 2022 (in person)!!
Grad students Feng and Karina won the SRAA poster competition and David won a travel award to attend BPS!!
Nov 25 21
We have a new preprint out: Hidden structure in disordered proteins is adaptive to intracellular changes. Check it out here!
Oct 29 21
Our Lab had a halloween party where our in-house band Eddy and the IDPs performed!! The night was full of pizza, music and pumpkin carving fun!
Oct 26 21
Our Lab visited Hunter Farms Pumpkin Patch and had a blast together doing corn mazes, eating good food and enjoying the fall weather together.
Sept 14 21
Karina was a winner of the #IDPSIG21 poster competition that was sponsored by Dewpoint Therapeutics and organized by Stanford’s IDPSIG. Congrats to Karina for all her hard work!!
Sept 14 21
In collaboration with Cesar Cuevas-Velazquez (UMAN) and José Dinneny (Stanford) labs, we have published Intrinsically disordered protein biosensor tracks the physical-chemical effects of osmotic stress on cells in Nature Communications. Read out new paper here!
Sept 9 21
Grad students David, Eduardo, Karina and Feng presented posters at IDPSIG. David also gave a wonderful flash talk.
Sept 1 21
In collaboration with UNAM’s Cesar Cuevas-Velazquez, our lab is hosting master’s student Daniela Navarrete for 3 months. She will use Solution Space Scanning on Late Embryogenesis (LEA) proteins structural response to changes in solution conditions!
Aug 2 21
Feng has passed his qualifying exam is now a Ph.D. candidate!! He is the third student in the lab to pass quals. The lab is so proud of our grad students.
July 30 21
The Sukenik lab was awarded an NSF-funded grant in collaboration with the Holehouse (WASHU) and Boothby (U of Wyoming) labs to study how IDPs in cells can protect organisms from desiccation or drying. Our lab looks forward to the four-year collaboration.
July 30 21
C-SIP/CCBM undergraduates, Dianna, Nora and Andres presented their summer research via ZOOM during the Annual Summer Symposium at UC Merced.
July 21 21
David has passed his qualifying exam with flying colors and has advanced to a Ph.D. candidate!!
Jun 25 21
Friends from the LiWang and Thompson labs joined us to celebrate Shahar and Karinas’ birthdays over good drinks and food.
Jun 1-3 21
Grad students Feng and David are presenting posters and Karina is giving a talk at the Protein Folding Conference.
May 26 21
Shahar and Nora made 100 phase separation experiment kits for the 2nd graders at Los Reyes Elementary in Merced and walked them through a fun experiment to simulate phase separation over ZOOM.
We thank Carrie Kouadio from CCBM for organizing the event.
May 20 21
The lab went on an arduous albeit fun 12+ mile long hike through Yosemite’s beautiful Nevada and Vernal Falls.
Apr 22 21
The Sukenik lab and the César Cuevas-Velazquez Lab at UNAM held a joint lab meeting. Grad students David and Karina gave talks on their current work.
Mar 24 21
Students Karina and Nora participated in the Annual Science Day at CSU Stanislaus where they did live-cell microscopy experiments for over 100 k-12 students over ZOOM! Everyone had a blast.
Jan 15 21
Shahar was invited to give a research talk at Extreme Biology, discussing how the cellular environment affects disordered protein function and their prevalence in extremophiles.
Jan 12 21
The Sukenik, Holehouse and Boothy Labs had their first tri-lab meeting. Grad students Karina and David presented their work and all of the labs got to know each other better.
Jan 6 2021
The Sukenik went on a lab hike in the Redhills and had a (CDC concordant) blast!
Nov 19 20
Shahar gave a talk at IDPSeminars, discussing how the cellular environment affects disordered protein function.
Nov 16 2020
David and Feng’s paper finally out in JPCL! Read it here!
Oct 27 20
The lab was featured in a UC Merced press release. Click here to read it!
Oct 22 20
Our lab hosted Dr. Erik Martin (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital)
Oct 6 20
Grad students David and Feng presented posters at Gibbs Annual Biothermodynamics Conference.
Oct 2 20
Karina and David won 1st place at the CCBM poster competition! Many congrats to them!
Oct 1 20 Lab seminar
The lab hosted Dr. Jose Alfredo Caro (Texas A&M) where he gave a ZOOM talk about his latest research.
Sep 12 20 Grant awarded!
The Sukenik and Cuevas labs have been awarded UC-CONACYT bi-national grant to study the effect of disordered proteins in plants experiencing drought
Aug 18 20 New Preprint Out!
By David and Feng, Probing the Hidden Sensitivity of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to their Chemical Environment. Read it here!
Aug 8 20 New preprint!
In collaboration with the Rhee and Gitler labs, we look at the role of FLOE1 in regulating seed germination. Read it here!
Aug 3 20 Congratulations Karina!
Karina has passed her qualifying exam with flying colors and has advanced to doctoral candidacy!
Jul 15 20 Lab seminars
We recently hosted Dr. Danfeng Cai (Hopkins) and Dr. Keren Lasker (Stanford) at our journal club/seminar series.
Apr 7 20. Outreach and Live Demos.
Lab members David, Eduardo and Nora did biochemistry demonstrations for the community at Science Saturday at CSU Stanislaus which attracts hundreds of K-12 students every year.