Tag: Pakeeza Azizpor

3 Students Graduate

We are incredibly proud to celebrate a massive summer graduation season in the Dillman Lab! Huge congratulations to our three departing and transitioning scholars:
-Dr. Perla Achi graduated with a Ph.D. in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology. She is staying within the UCR family and has started a postdoctoral position in Simon “Niels” Groen’s lab.
-Dr. Pakeeza Azizpor graduated with a Ph.D. in Genetics and has headed north to Stanford University, where she has begun a postdoctoral position in Matias Garten’s lab.
-Robert Pena earned his Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences. He is currently still driving projects forward in the lab while actively applying to Ph.D. programs!
We are so grateful for all your hard work, curiosity, and contributions to the lab. We can’t wait to see what you accomplish next!

Polyunsaturated fatty acids stimulate immunity andeicosanoid production in Drosophila melanogaster

Pakeeza and Ogadinma just published a paper in the Journal of Lipid Research. The paper shows that if arachidonic acid (AA) is injected into the fly, it stimulates production of twenty-carbon polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), also known as eicosanoids. They also showed that both linoleic acid (LA) and AA stimulate the fly immune response when D. melanogaster is exposed to a heat-killed bacterial pathogen. This work identifies PUFAs that are involved in insect immunity and adds evidence to the notion that Drosophila utilizes immunostimulatory lipid signaling to mitigate bacterial infections.


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