Research Technician and Lab Manager
B.S. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2004)
started in the lab: February, 1999

Research Interests

In addition to running the lab (maintaining equipment and supplies, being lab safety officer, training new personnel, etc.) and helping out other lab members, I have a project that looks at how genome position influences the outcome of meiotic recombination. I'm using phiC31 integration to put different alleles of ry into several different locations on the X chromosome, then measuring rates of meiotic crossing over within the gene and rates of non-crossover gene conversion.

Publications from the Sekelsky Lab (as S. McMahan)

• H.K. Kuo, S. McMahan, C. Rota, K.P. Kohl, and J. Sekelsky (2014) Drosophila FANCM helicase prevents spontaneous mitotic crossovers generated by the MUS81 and SLX1 nucleases. Genetics 198: 135-145.
   
• K.N. Crown, S. McMahan, and J. Sekelsky (2014) Eliminating both canonical and short-patch mismatch repair in Drosophila suggests a new meiotic recombination model. PLoS Genetics 10: e1004583.
   
• S. McMahan, K.P. Kohl, and J. Sekelsky (2013) Variation in meiotic recombination frequencies between allelic transgenes inserted at fifferent sites in the Drosophila melanogaster genome. G3 3: 1419-1427.
   
• S.J. Radford, M. Sabourin, S. McMahan, and J. Sekelsky (2007) Meiotic recombination in Drosophila Msh6 mutants yields discontinuous gene conversion tracts. Genetics 176: 52-63.
   
• S.J. Radford, S. McMahan, H. Blanton, and J. Sekelsky (2007) Heteroduplex DNA in meiotic recombination in Drosophila mei-9 mutants Genetics 176: 63-72.
   
• H. Blanton, S.J. Radford, H. Kearney, S. McMahan, J. Ibrahim, and J. Sekelsky (2005) REC, Drosophila MCM8, drives formation of meiotic crossovers. PLoS Genetics 1: e40.
   
• S.J. Radford, E. Goley, K. Baxter, S. McMahan, and J. Sekelsky (2005) Drosophila ERCC1 is required for a subset of MEI-9-dependent meiotic crossovers. Genetics 170: 1737-1745.
   

Awards

Star Heel Award (2003)