PI: Pamela A. Padilla, Ph.D.

Pam, an Associate Professor at UNT, received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico and conducted her post-doctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle WA. Pam has an interest in how environmental stress affects living organisms at the cellular, genetic and molecular level. She has experience studying stress with many model systems including C. elegans, yeast, zebrafish, killifish, and mammalian cell culture. Her research has been continually supported by either NIH or NSF and she has received numerous fellowships and grants throughout her career. She is a Kavli Fellow, was supported by the Glenn Scholars program at the Salk Institute, editor for the book “Anoxia”, a reviewer for many journals and granting institutes, given an outstanding mentor award by Siemens Scholarships and was award the Early Career Award for Research and Creativity at UNT. Aside from her intense interest in science and education she enjoys running, dogs, music and spending time with her family and friends. 

About Padilla Lab Members

Anastacia (Tasha) Garcia, B.S. 

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Tasha is interested in studying oxygen deprivation in the context of human diseases using C. elegans as a model. Progression of diseases such as stroke and cardiac dysfunction are influenced by diet, environment and genetics. Consequently, understanding the relationship between environment (diet), genotype and the survival of oxygen deprivation is fundamental. This work is significant given the central role diet and oxygen deprivation has on human health related issues like Diabetes. Tasha is originally from NM and president of the UNT SACNAS chapter.


Mary Ladage, B.S.

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Mary is interested in investigating the role of specific signaling pathways in oxygen deprivation.  Genotype greatly affects the rate and quality of survivorship during long-term anoxia stress (>24 hours); however, the mechanisms by which different genetic mutations confer increased survival are poorly understood.  It is of interest to characterize the differences between long-term anoxia survivors by the use of molecular and cell biological techniques.  This information can then be used to identify key regulators of anoxia survival and recovery, and to target these regulators for preventative or ameliorative therapies. Mary  grew up in TX and enjoys traveling.

Lee Toni, B.S.

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Lee is currently using cell biology to gain a better understanding of how chromatin remodeling may play a role in the induction of diapause in Austrofundulus limnaeus.  A. limnaeus is a freshwater annual killifish from Venezuela that produces embryos capable of entering three distinct stages of diapause. One of these stages, diapause II, is obligate. In this state the animal can survive several months of anoxia, recover, and continue development. Additionally this work aims to understand how the animal is able to remain in an arrested and undifferentiated state for so long. We are testing if a similar suite of transcriptions factors are shared between diapause II cells and undifferentiated adult stem-cells. This research is leading to a greater molecular understanding of the remarkable phenomenon of obligate developmental arrest in a vertebrate embryo.

Jo Goy, M.S.

Ph.D. Graduate Student and Assistant Professor at Harding University

Jo is interested in understanding how germ line function affects stress response and survival. Furthermore, she studies how aging organisms are affected by stress responses. The majority of stress studies have been conducted in young adult C. elegans. There are additional factors to consider with doing such and analysis of aged animals should be included in analysis of stress response and survival. Jo has an academic position at Harding University, AR; she took a leave from this position to conduct research in the Padilla Lab. In addition to science she is busy learning Hindi and traveled to India recently.

Candace LaRue, M.S.

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Candace has a background in Education and was a high school science teacher. She has been central to the development of the inquiry-based lessons developed for the Genetics course required for  undergraduate students. Another project she has involves working with local schools so that students are involved with the isolation of nematodes from the soil. She has isolated nematodes from compost piles here in Denton and soil near a pond. She is interested in evolution, science education and spending time with her family.