Ph.D. student in Dr. Martynyuk’s laboratory successfully passes Qualifying Examination

Please help us congratulate Ling-sha (“Lisa”) Ju, M.S., a doctoral student in Anatoly Martynyuk, Ph.D.’s laboratory, who has successfully passed the Qualifying Examination for the Ph.D.

Ling-shu Ju

The Qualifying Examination is a key benchmark in a doctoral student’s progress toward candidacy. Ju gave a presentation via Zoom on May 12 as part of her qualifying examination, titled “Traumatic brain injury predisposes young adults and their future offspring to perioperative neurocognitive disorders.”

She is pursuing her Ph.D. in Martynyuk’s Neurosciences in Anesthesiology laboratory under his mentorship, with Paul Cooke, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Physiological Sciences in UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine, as a co-mentor.

She joined Martynyuk’s laboratory in 2015 after receiving her Doctor of Medicine from Xuzhou Medical University. She previously completed research training in neuroscience in anesthesiology for a Master of Science degree (M.S. in medicine) at Nanjing University, one of the most successful biomedical laboratories in China.

Ju has been an important team member participating in Martynyuk’s research on the heritable effects of general anesthetics. She was among the first to identify the role of epigenetic reprograming of expressions of genes that are essential for brain development in neurodevelopmental abnormalities caused by sevoflurane. Specifically, she found that neonatal exposure to sevoflurane increased expression of hippocampal DNA methyltransferases, leading to hypermethylation and reduced expression of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene and behavioral abnormalities.

Congratulations, Dr. Ju!