Contact Information:
Research Interests:
I am interested in the centromeric regions of human chromosomes, how their sequences differ from person to person and the impact of their sequences on centromeric protein recruitment. I also question the epigenetic factors that regulate human centromere formation. I employ CRISPR design to investigate these areas of interest.
Personal Interests:
Since having a kid, my interests are coffee, coffee and coffee. “A day without coffee is like… just kidding, I have no idea.” Spending time with my husband, the funniest German I know. Obsessed with traveling – Croatia is beautiful (don’t tell anybody), Slovenia has the best highways, camels in the Sahara desert are gassy and snowmobiling on a glacier covering a volcano in Iceland is highly recommended. Wondering why the internet always lies to me.
Publications List:
Lewis, Alexandra and Berkyurek, Ahmet C. and Greiner, Andre and Sawh, Ahilya N. and Vashisht, Ajay and Merrett, Stephanie and Flamand, Mathieu N. and Wohlschlegel, James and Sarov, Mihail and Miska, Eric and Duchaine, Thomas F., (2020). A Family of Nuclear Argonaute Interacting Proteins Gates Nuclear RNAi. Molecular Cell, 78(5), 862-875.e8.
Gaither, T. L., Merrett, S. L., Pun, M. J., & Scott, K. C. (2014). Centromeric barrier disruption leads to mitotic defects in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. G3 (Bethesda), 4(4), 633–642
Maloney KA, Sullivan LL, Matheny JE, Strome ED, Merrett SL, Ferris A, Sullivan BA. (2012). Functional epialleles at an endogenous human centromere. PNAS 109(34): 13704-9
Horvath, J.E., Sheedy, C.B., Merrett, S.L., Diallo, A.B., Swofford, D.L., NISC Comparative Sequencing Program, Green, E.D., Willard, H.F. (2011). Comparative analysis of the primate X-inactivation center region and reconstruction of the ancestral primate XIST locus. Genome Research
Lange, J., Skaletsky, H., K.M. van Daalen, S., Embry, S.L., Korver, C.M., Brown, L.G., Oates, R.D., Silber, S., Repping, S., and Page, D.C. (2009). Isodicentric Y Chromosomes and Sex Disorders as Byproducts of Homologous Recombination that Maintains Palindromes. Cell 138: 855-869.
Horvath, J.E., Weisrock, D.W., Embry, S.L., Fiorentino, I., Balhoff, J.P., Kappeer, P., Wray, G.A., Willard, H.F., Yoder, A.D. (2008). Development and application of a phylogenomic toolkit: resolving the evolutionary history of Madagascar’s lemurs. Genome Research 18: 489-499.
Scott, K.C., Merrett, S.L., and Willard, H.F. (2006). A heterochromatin barrier partitions the fission yeast centromere into discrete domains. Current Biology 16: 119-129