Member Listing – Summer Thyme

Testing computational predictions in zebrafish models of neurodevelopmental disorders, with a focus on drug discovery.

Dr. Thyme is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. Her long-term research goals are to uncover the molecular basis of complex neurodevelopmental diseases and eventually create therapies. She has a broad background in biochemistry, molecular biology, neurobiology, and computational techniques. As a graduate student in Dr. David Baker’s lab (2006-2012), Dr. Thyme fused computational and experimental approaches to redesign biomolecular interactions, mastering a wide range of approaches including enzymology, directed protein evolution, multiple coding languages, and high-throughput computing. This foundation provided her with a fundamental understanding of protein structure and function and the skills to engineer therapeutics. As a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Research Fellow and K99 recipient in Dr. Alexander Schier’s lab (2012-2019), Dr. Thyme studied the pathways regulated by genes involved in complex neuropsychiatric disorders. She established expertise with zebrafish, an ideal model vertebrate for large-scale genetic and neurodevelopmental studies as well as compound screening. The combination of Dr. Thyme’s graduate and postdoctoral training gives her a unique perspective for understanding and intervening in neurobiological disease on multiple levels, from molecules to circuitry. She has the tools to engineer therapeutics, model protein structures, and dissect how changes at the level of proteins can disrupt the neurodevelopment and behavior of a vertebrate.

zebrafish; drug discovery; genome engineering

2006