Elyse Lee

SPIRE Fellow, Genetics
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


Hello! I just joined the SPIRE community in January '06 and feel privileged to be here. So far, SPIRE has proven to be an ideal program to pursue my parallel interests in research and teaching.

Although born in New York City, I have spent most of my life in the suburbs of Jersey and Philly. After dissecting my first fetal pig in high school, I took a serious liking to biology and decided that I wanted to become a research scientist. I completed my undergraduate degree at Rutgers University in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, where I had the opportunity to be involved in developmental toxicology research using various bird, fish, and rodent models. From there, I attended the University of Wisconsin - Madison and earned a doctoral degree in Molecular and Environmental Toxicology. My thesis work focused on the role of redox-sensitive transcription factors in androgen-induced oxidative stress in prostate carcinoma cells. During my gradual school years, I was blessed with an advisor who allowed me to pursue my interests in teaching through TAing, K-12 outreach, and an HHMI teaching fellowship in scientific teaching.

Here at UNC-Chapel Hill under the mentorship of Dr. David Threadgill, I am investigating how gene-environment interactions influence resistance and susceptibility to chemical carcinogenesis in colon and breast cancer using a combination of genetic, genomic, and proteomic tools. I am particularly interested in how age-associated accumulation of pro-oxidant events and decline in antioxidant defenses can promote genetic and epigenetic modifications in gene expression patterns to accelerate tumor development and progression.

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