Teaching Information
Teaching Interests
I focus on using active, student-centered learning strategies for impactful teaching—my goal is that
students are excited by the science we get to explore, and changed by the time we spend together. This
primarily involves undergraduate and graduate students interested in molecular biology and cancer; I
also work with high school students as part of the Wood Summer Research Scholars Program.
I am very interested in developing engaging, transformative pedagogy, and in the scholarship of
teaching and learning. If you have ideas about how you can participate, or are interested in arranging a
mentoring experience, please reach out!
Courses Taught
Research Information
Research Interests
Please note that I do not have an active lab, and can only offer research and mentoring experiences connected to pedagogy.
My previous research focused on the process of tRNA modification, where individual tRNA molecules are decorated with a host of chemical modifications in order to fulfill their critical role in cellular translation. Recent work highlights that these tRNA modifications are important to the health of the cell, and therefore to human health and disease. Despite this importance, there are large gaps in our understanding of how, where, and why tRNA modifications occur. My lab uses classical biochemical assays and yeast genetics to investigate these questions, and is particularly interested in determining how modification enzymes select correct targets out of a pool of similarly-structured tRNA molecules.
Publications
- Howell, N.W., Jora, M., Jepson, B.F., Limbach, P.A., Jackman, J.E. (2019) Distinct substrate specificities of the human tRNA methyltransferases TRMT10A and TRMT10B. RNA, October 2019 25: 1366-1376
- Howell, N.W., Jackman, J.E. (2019) Impact of chemical modification on tRNA function. eLS, 10.1002/9780470015902.a0028527