Debbie 's interest in genetics and molecular biology began by attending two summer programs during high school, instead of having fun at the beach. She then, for unexplained reasons, majored in Biology and Literature at MIT. She moved on directly to the Cancer Biology program at Stanford University, where, given her project (see below), she will be a graduate student forever.
In her spare time, Debbie has recently discovered a talent for making personalized and/or thematic "Lab Mice" out of clay. Someday she will have a website where you can view her work. Meanwhile, many of these mice grace the pages of this website.

The ability of the cell to appropriately respond to environmental stimuli depends upon networks of protein interactions and transcriptional feedback loops. In order to tease out the importance of feedback and compensatory mechanisms within the RB-E2F network, Debbie uses a mouse knock-in approach to introduce point mutations into the E2F binding sites present in the promoters of E2F target genes. This sounds crazy, and it is. In theory, this approach leaves both the E2Fs and the target gene completely intact, disabling only a single node in a complex network.