Michael Wolfe

Ph.D. Candidate, Biological Chemistry Department

Contact

3315 MSRB III

SPC5606, 1150 W. Medical Center Drive

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0600

mbwolfe@umich.edu

Github: https://github.com/mikewolfe

Education

M.S. in Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, 2015-Present

B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from The Ohio State University, 2014

Research Interests

I work on understanding gene regulation at a global level, mainly in bacteria but also in higher eukaryotes (humans), by probing the interactions of Nucleic Acid binding proteins and their RNA or DNA targets. My approaches to this mainly include the analysis of large-scale high-throughput sequencing datasets to create regulatory maps of particular transcription factors (proteins that bind to DNA and control transcription and thus RNA expression), or RNA binding proteins (proteins that bind to RNA and control RNA stability/translation and thus RNA and protein expression). In addition to the analysis of experimental data, I am also developing computational algorithms to predict where Transcription Factors or RNA binding proteins bind given nucleic-acid sequence information only. The overarching end goal of this effort is to reverse engineer the regulatory systems of cells so we can predict what they will do in an environment of interest, target maladaptive regulatory states and change them (antibiotics for bacteria, disease states for humans), or create regulatory systems in bacteria to make products of interest.

Publications

*Indicates co-first authorship

Wolfe M. B., Goldstrohm A. C., Freddolino P. L. Global Analysis of RNA metabolism using bio-orthogonal labeling coupled with next-generation RNA sequencing. Methods (2018). in press

*Kroner, G. M., *Wolfe, M. B. and Freddolino, P. L. Escherichia coli Lrp regulates one- third of the genome via direct, cooperative, and indirect routes. Journal of Bacteriology JB.00411-18 (2018). doi:10.1128/JB.00411-18 in press

Fellowships and Awards

National Science Foundation

• • Graduate Research Fellowship Program Fellow, 2015–present

  • Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, 2014

University of Michigan

• • Honorable Mention Best Poster, Rustbelt RNA Meeting, Indianapolis, IN, 2017

  • Rackham Conference Travel Grant, 2017

  • Rackham Conference Travel Grant, 2016

  • Halvor and Mary Christensen Award for the most outstanding second-year graduate student in the Biological Chemistry Department, 2016

  • Detroit Zoo Fellowship in Science Communication, 2014–2015

  • Bernard L. Mass Endowed Medical Fellowship Awardee, 2014–present

Professional History

2015 to Present:

Graduate Research Assistant, Freddolino Lab, Biological Chemistry Department, University of Michigan

2010 to 2014

Undergraduate Research Assistant, Jackman Lab, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Ohio State University