Prachee is the co-founder and CSO of Arcadia Science. She comes from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth where she is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Prachee is also the President of ASAPbio.
Building on the open-source platform PubPub, we’re sharing the first iteration of our publishing website. In addition to posting our first set of research pubs, we’re documenting our progress in developing this new system for sharing science and hope you’ll provide feedback.
Cells can be highly motile, moving in and out of a microscope’s field of view. Understanding complex life cycles is difficult without continuous observation. To overcome this challenge, we’ve developed a 3D-printed microchamber device to confine cells for long-term visualization.
Quantifying movement is a powerful window into cellular functions. However, cells can generate movement through a variety of complex mechanisms. Here, we generate a flexible framework for comparing an especially variable type of motility: cellular crawling.
The process of deciding whether a candidate actin homolog represents a “true” actin is tricky. We propose clear and data-driven criteria to define actin that highlight the functional importance of this protein while accounting for phylogenetic diversity.
Long protrusions from several microalgal species appear to help cells move, capture prey, transport mitochondria and chloroplasts, and more. Are they filopodia that evolved abilities more like other actin- or microtubule-based structures, or are they something new?
Prachee Avasthi, Cameron Dale MacQuarrie, and Atanas Radkov
BB
Published: Mar 29, 2023
Treating P. tricornutum cells with serine endopeptidases or certain cytoskeletal inhibitors induces the formation of cell wall-free protoplasts and suggests a novel role for actin and myosin in preventing protoplast formation.
Even with many tools available, categorizing species is tough. We used data from Raman spectroscopy, a form of label-free imaging, to infer phylogenetic patterns among several dozen diverse microbial taxa, offering a non-destructive and rapid way to dissect species relationships.
Prachee Avasthi, Tara Essock-Burns, Galo Garcia III, Jase Gehring, David Q. Matus, David G. Mets, and Ryan York
TE
+3
Published: May 03, 2023
Constraining motile microorganisms for live imaging often requires costly microfluidics or optical traps to keep them in view. We used patterned stamps and agar to make versatile, inexpensive “microchambers” and offer a way to predict the right chamber size for a given organism.
Prachee Avasthi, Rachel J. Dutton, Taylor Reiter, and Emily C.P. Weiss
RD
KP
TR
Published: Jul 20, 2023
We are interested in neuroactive metabolites that influence animal behavior. Some fungi have horizontally transferred neuroactive metabolite pathways between species. We used a horizontal gene transfer detection pipeline to screen for novel fungal genes tied to neuroactivity.
Researchers studying any organism with genomic data can follow this simple walkthrough to create sets of barcoded probes for the multiplexed FISH technique called MERFISH. We’re sharing interactive code notebooks that can be adapted to design barcoded FISH probes for any species.
Prachee Avasthi, Feridun Mert Celebi, Elizabeth A. McDaniel, Kira E. Poskanzer, Michael E. Reitman, and Emily C.P. Weiss
SC
RD
+5
Published: Dec 20, 2023
Some human proteins are encoded by genes with repetitive sequences, which, if they expand, damage the nervous system and cause disorders like Huntington’s disease. We found animals with similar proteins that have more repeats than we’ve ever seen in healthy people.
It is commonly assumed that phenotypes arise from the cumulative effects of many independent genes. However, we show that by accounting for dependent and nonlinear biological relationships, we can generate models that predict phenotypes with great accuracy.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Feridun Mert Celebi, Keith Cheveralls, Jase Gehring, Erin McGeever, Gilad Mishne, Atanas Radkov, and 1 more
BB
KC
RD
+14
Published: Sep 29, 2023
The ProteinCartography pipeline identifies proteins related to a query protein using sequence- and structure-based searches, compares all protein structures, and creates a navigable map that can be used to look at protein relationships and make hypotheses about function.
Prachee Avasthi, Feridun Mert Celebi, and Elizabeth A. McDaniel
BB
+3
Published: Oct 06, 2023
Only some bacteria accumulate substantial amounts of polyphosphate (polyP). We thought that despite sequence divergence, polyP synthesis enzymes in these bacteria might have similar structures. We found this is sometimes true but doesn’t fully explain the phenomenon.
Prachee Avasthi, Ben Braverman, Tara Essock-Burns, Galo Garcia III, Cameron Dale MacQuarrie, David Q. Matus, David G. Mets, and Ryan York
BB
TE
+7
Published: Jun 23, 2023
We’re crossing C. reinhardtii and C. smithii algae for high-throughput genotype-phenotype mapping. In preparation, we’re comparing the parents to uncover unique species-specific phenotypes.
Oligo pools can contain millions of unique sequences, but they’re limited by length, error rate, and bias. We propose methods to scalably screen synthetic DNA libraries, so an individual researcher can obtain thousands of error-free synthetic DNA assemblies at low cost.
Prachee Avasthi, Feridun Mert Celebi, Keith Cheveralls, Seemay Chou, Ilya Kolb, and David Q. Matus
KC
SC
AH
+5
Published: Dec 02, 2023
Machine learning is a powerful tool for classifying images in a time series, such as the developmental stages of embryos. We built a classifier using only bright-field microscopy images to infer nematode embryonic stages at high throughput.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Dennis A. Sun, and Ryan York
BB
TR
DS
+1
Published: Feb 14, 2024
We've applied ProteinCartography, a tool for protein family exploration, to the well-studied actin family. We’re able to categorize actins and related proteins into distinguishable functional buckets, and we uncovered some surprising hypotheses that could prompt further study.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Ilya Kolb, David G. Mets, Manon Morin, Austin H. Patton, and Ryan York
BB
IK
DM
+5
Published: Mar 06, 2024
We outline a comparative approach to investigate protein function by correlating the presence or absence of a protein with species-level phenotypes. We applied this strategy to a novel actin isoform in fungi but didn’t find an association with any of the phenotypes we considered.
Prachee Avasthi, Megan L. Hochstrasser, Jasmine Neal, Austin H. Patton, and Ryan York
RY
Published: Mar 05, 2024
We’re seeking feedback on NovelTree, our modular phylogenomic workflow. We’d appreciate your insights into how we can improve gene family inference, incorporate protein structure predictions, and expand to whole-genome data as input.
Megan L. Hochstrasser, Jasmine Neal, and Robert Roth
Published: Mar 29, 2024
How can we measure the true impact of science? We're seeking feedback on indicators of the utility and rigor of publications beyond traditional journal metrics. Your input will help shape the future of our publishing experiment.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Ben Braverman, Tara Essock-Burns, Ryan Lane, David G. Mets, Austin H. Patton, and Ryan York
BB
TE
+7
Published: May 31, 2024
To test its utility in analyzing biological samples, we built an open-source Raman spectrometer and collected spectra from chilis, beer, and algae. We could stratify samples, classify replicates, and link spectra with quantitative traits of beer (ABV) and chilis (perceived heat).
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Atanas Radkov, Harper Wood, and Ryan York
BB
DS
+2
Published: May 31, 2024
We’re using the well-studied superfamily of small monomeric GTPases, the Ras GTPases, to evaluate our structure-based clustering tool, ProteinCartography. We’re seeking feedback on working with this protein family and determining which individual proteins to study.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Atanas Radkov, Harper Wood, and Ryan York
BB
DS
+2
Published: May 31, 2024
The human deoxycytidine kinase, a member of the nucleoside salvage pathway, has been studied extensively. We’ll use this family to assess our structure-based protein clustering tool, ProteinCartography. We’d love feedback on how we might work with this protein for validation.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Atanas Radkov, Harper Wood, and Ryan York
BB
DS
+2
Published: May 31, 2024
We aim to validate ProteinCartography, a tool for structure-based protein clustering, by evaluating two foundational hypotheses: that proteins within a cluster have similar functions and proteins in different clusters have differing functions.
Prachee Avasthi, Megan L. Hochstrasser, and Robert Roth
SC
Published: Jun 13, 2024
Two years into our publishing experiment, we’ve learned a lot. We built internal processes that worked but inadvertently decreased scientists' agency and creativity. Now, we’re minimizing process in an effort to empower our scientists to share their work how they see fit.
Many protein prediction and design models rely on evolutionary comparisons. We show that popular databases are phylogenetically biased, influencing the statistical utility of the known protein universe in important ways.