Anne Casper

A photo of Anne Casper

Professor

Biology

403D Mark Jefferson Science Complex

734.487.0212

[email protected]

Education

  • BS, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1999
  • MS, University of Michigan, 2002
  • Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2005
  • Post-doctoral training, SPIRE program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Post-doctoral training, Duke University

Interests and Expertise

(1) I am involved in research on biology education, with a focus on the teaching of introductory biology classes.  My lab investigates the impact of pedagogical practices on student success, with a particular focus on how we can increase the participation of historically underrepresented groups in the sciences.  You can read a news article about this work in EMU Today.

(2) I study antibiotic-producing microbes from the soil.  My lab further investigates microbes collected by students in the Tiny Earth Introductory Biology lab classes at EMU.  We want to understand which conditions most stimulate antibiotic production, and learn about the genes involved in antibiotic production.

(3) I am interested in how breaks in DNA are repaired by homologous recombination.  In particular, my lab studies the break-induced replication (BIR) pathway, with the goal of understanding how BIR can lead to chromosomal rearrangements. This research uses baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model organism. You can view a short TRUEMU video about this work.

Courses

  • BIO 110 Introductory Biology: Cells & Molecules
  • BIO 301 Genetics
  • BIO 305 Cell and Molecular Biology

Publications and Presentations

†denotes MS student author

*denotes undergraduate author

  • Stewart JA*, Hillegass MB*, Oberlitner JH*, Younkin EM, Wasserman BF*, and Casper AM. Non-canonical outcomes of break-induced replication produce complex, extremely long-tract gene conversion events in yeast G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics (2021).
  • Pape-Lindstrom P, Casper A, Eddy S, and Freeman S. Community college students rise to the challenge—meeting the time demands of highly structured courses Journal of College Science Teaching 49(5): 7-16 (2020).
  • Casper AM, Eddy SL, and Freeman S. True Grit: Passion and persistence make an innovative course design work.  PLOS Biology (2019). doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000359.
  • Chumki SA*, Dunn MK*, Coates TF*, Mishler JD†, Younkin EM, and Casper AM. Remarkably Long-Tract Gene Conversion Induced by Fragile Site Instability in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genetics (2016) Sep;204(1):115-28. doi: 10.1534/genetics.116.191205. 
  • Rosen DM†, Younkin EM, Miller SD*, and Casper AM. Fragile Site Instability in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Causes Loss of Heterozygosity by Mitotic Crossovers and Break-Induced Replication. PLoS Genetics (2013) 9(9):e1003817. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003817.
  • Casper AM, Rosen DM†, and Rajula KD†.  Sites of genetic instability in mitosis and cancer. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2012) 1267:24–30.  [conference issue]
  • Casper AM, Greenwell PW, Tang W, and Petes TD.  Chromosome aberrations resulting from double-strand DNA breaks at a naturally-occurring yeast fragile site composed of inverted Ty elements are independent of Mre11p and Sae2p. Genetics(2009) 183: 423–39.
  • Casper AM. Colon Cancer: A Case of Genetic Bad Luck? Web-based Case Study Collection of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo (2008).
  • Casper AM, Mieczkowski PA, Gawel M and Petes TD. Low Levels of DNA Polymerase Alpha Induce Mitotic and Meiotic Instability in the Ribosomal DNA Gene Cluster of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. PLoS Genetics (2008) 4(6): e1000105 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000105
  • Casper AM, Arlt MF, and Glover TW. "Common Fragile Sites: Cytogenetics and Cell Cycle Checkpoints." Fragile Sites: New discoveries and changing perspectives. Eds. Isabel Arrieta, Olga Penagarikano, Mercedes Telez. Nova Science Publishers Inc., Hauppauge, NY (2007), pp. 47–66.
  • Miller CT, Lin L, Casper AM, Lim J, Thomas DG, Orringer MB, Chang AC, Chambers AF, Giordano TJ, Glover TW and Beer DG. Genomic amplification of MET with boundaries within fragile site FRA7G and upregulation of MET pathways in esophageal adenocarcinoma. Oncogene (2006) 25:409–18.
  • Glover TW, Arlt MF, Casper AM and Durkin SG. Mechanisms of common fragile site instability. Human Molecular Genetics (2005) 14 (Supp. 2):R197–R205.
  • Casper AM, Durkin SG, Arlt MF and Glover TW. Chromosomal Instability at Common Fragile Sites in Seckel Syndrome. The American Journal of Human Genetics (2004) 75:654–60.
  • Arlt MF, Xu B, Durkin SG, Casper AM, Kastan MB and Glover TW. The BRCA1-dependent G2/M checkpoint pathway is crucial to common fragile site maintenance. Molecular and Cellular Biology (2004) 24:6701–6709. Arlt MF,
  • Casper AM and Glover TW. Common Fragile Sites. Cytogenetic and Genome Research (2003) 100:92–100. [invited review]
  • Casper AM, Nghiem P, Arlt MF and Glover TW. ATR Regulates Fragile Site Stability. Cell (2002) 111:779–789.