News
10/16/2025
The lab is moving! We are relocating to modular space in the Starzl Biomedical Science Tower…. it was definitely a process but we still tried to goof off to the best of our abilitiy….
04/27/2025
Congrats to Katie Nguyen, who cleaned up at the American Physiology Summit meeting in Baltimore… she gave not one, but two (!) invited podium talks, a poster presentation, and received an APS postdoctoral research recognition award. Needless to say, her terrific work on WNK condensate dynamics is generating a ton of interest from the physiology community!
10/27/2024
The lab is back from Kidney Week 2024 in San Diego. It was a terrific meeting, and it was great to catch up with friends and colleagues. Also, congratulations to Cary Boyd-Shiwarski, who gave a talk on distal tubule WNK bodies during a session on potassium stress and the kidney. Admittedly, a pretty bad picture that doesn’t nearly do justice to her amazing presentation!
09/17/2024
Many thanks to The Physiologist Magazine for featuring us in this month’s “Under the Microscope”… was fun to do this interview!
09/07/2024
Ro is back from Toronto, where he served as an external examiner for Yu-Xi Xiao’s thesis defense, which she passed with flying colors :) Yu-Xi published a mind-blowing paper earlier this year where she identified new and essential components in WNK signaling condensates. Check it out! The paper is a tour de force that will change how we think about salt transport in the kidney and other organs, so big congratulations to Dr. Xiao and her advisor Jason Moffat. Also, Toronto is an amazing city!
03/11/2024
Much of the lab is back from a terrific site visit at the University of Utah, where we met with our WNK Drosophila collaborators, led by Aylin Rodan. The Drosophila Malpighian tubule is a simplified version of the nephron, and is therefore a great system to study fundamental mechanisms that drive kidney ion transport. We learned a lot during our visit and look forward to continuing our productive collaboration… we also went snowshoeing, which was a blast!
02/23/2024
Our review on molecular crowding is now out in Annual Reviews of Physiology. The review provides an overview on cytoplasmic crowding and its emerging role in a variety of physiological processes.
02/01/2024
A big welcome to Nga (Katie) Nguyen, who joins the lab as a postdoctoral associate! Katie will be studying the formation and disassembly of WNK signaling condensates in response to hypertonic stress-induced crowding. Welcome Katie, can’t wait to see what you discover in the lab!
11/06/2023
Back from an outstanding ASN Kidney Week, where Ro presented the lab’s work on WNK condensates as part of a symposium honoring the legacy of Maurice Burg, a renal physiologist who pioneered the field of tubule microperfusion and published extensively on osmotic stress.
10/30/2023
Our work on WNK condensates was featured in the Fall issue of PittMed magazine. Check out a link to the article here.
08/20/2023
It’s official: Our NIDDK R01 on WNK1 regulation was renewed! In this funding period, we will study how WNK1 phase transitions regulate cell volume and distal nephron physiology. The work is a collaboration with Dr, Aylin Rodan’s group at the University of Utah and our longtime collaborator at Pitt, Dr Dandan Sun.
08/17/2023
Ro just got back from the 11th International Conference on Biological Physics in Seoul, where he presented the lab’s work on crowding sensing and condensate physiology. Just an incredible meeting with amazing sessions, hospitality, and interactions with thought leaders and upstarts in the field of biomolecular condensates. The attention to rigor and function was very evident. So excited for the future of this cutting edge field!
06/09/2023
Ro presented the lab’s work on WNK kinases as physiological crowding sensors at the Telluride Science Research Center’s Workshop on Macromolecular Crowding. A small format meeting with experts in the field of crowding biophysics, with amazing talks ranging from dessication biology to sickle cell disease. And of course, half the talks were on biomolecular condensates :) … A terrific workshop from start to finish.
03/28/2023
Ro presented the lab’s work on WNK kinases as crowding sensors as part of the Cell Size and Growth Virtual Seminar Series, organized by Matthew Swaffer and Jan Skotheim. A special opportunity to interact with scientists obsessed with cell size across the globe.
03/01/2023
Our paper on WNK kinases as molecular crowding sensors was mentioned in a press release by UPMC, and an article by Chemical & Engineering News, with comments by leaders in the field of condensate biology. The paper has been the subject of other editorials as well, including a well summarized commentary from Melanie Cobb’s group.
12/01/2022
There’s been a dearth of updates, but for good reason… we’ve been hard at work on a paper that was just published in Cell! In this work which took six years to complete, we identified a new function for WNK kinases as molecular crowding sensors. They do so by undergoing phase separation, forming liquid-like biomolecular condensates that regulate cell volume. The paper addresses decades-long knowledge gaps in the cell volume regulation and WNK signaling fields, while providing strong support for the relevance of biomolecular condensates in cell physiology. These were problems that Ro was perplexed by when he was a renal fellow… seriously, that’s a long time! Check out the paper here as well as its accompanying editorial.
