Olga Hunter

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EDUCATION

University of California in San Diego, CA. 

Bachelor of Science, Biochemistry and Cell Biology. 2005-2009 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

June 2009 - June 2024 Senior Research Associate  Conrad lab UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX 

2008. Lab Assistant at Burnham Institute for Medical Research, San Diego, CA. Participated in the in vitro and in vivo studies of gene targets identified in mice breast cancer tissue.

2005-2007. Lab Assistant at Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc, San Diego, CA.  Provided technical and analytical support for the drug metabolism and toxicity studies including biological handling and processing of cryopreserved animal hepatocytes for drug metabolite identification, to study a rate of metabolism and P450 inhibition.  

2005-2006. Lab Assistant at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA.  Participated in studies of circadian biology in Arabidopsis thaliana. 

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Experienced lab manager and specialist in molecular biology and biochemistry techniques. Hands-on experience in bacterial, protein and molecular biology methods. Involved in technical support of multiple projects studying the posttranscriptional regulation. Mainly focused on the mechanisms and regulation of nuclear RNA stability, polyadenylation, and mRNA processing by viral and by host cell factors. 

PUBLICATIONS

Hunter OV*, Ruiz JC*, Flaherty JN*, Conrad NK (2023). Functional analysis of 3' UTR hairpins supports a two-tiered model for posttranscriptional regulation of MAT2A by METTL16. RNA. 2023 Aug 11: rna.079695.123. doi: 10.1261/rna.079695.123. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37567786. (*These authors contributed equally).   

Devlin AM, Shukla A, Ruiz JC, Barnes SD, Govindan A, Hunter OV, Scarborough AM, D'Orso I, Conrad NK. (2023) The PNUTS-PP1 complex acts as an intrinsic barrier to herpesvirus KSHV gene expression and replication. Nat Commun. 2022 Dec 2;13(1):7447. doi: 10.1038/s41467- 022-35268-4. PMID: 36460671  

Scarborough AM, Flaherty JN, Hunter OV, Liu K, Kumar A, Xing C, Tu BP, and Conrad NK (2020). SAM homeostasis is regulated by CFI m-mediated splicing of MAT2A. Elife. 2021 May 5;10:e64930. doi: 10.7554/eLife.64930. 

Ruiz JC, Hunter OV, Conrad NK.  Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus ORF57 protein protects viral transcripts from specific nuclear RNA decay pathways by preventing hMTR4 recruitment. PLoS Pathog. 2019 Feb 20;15(2):e1007596. PMID: 30785952.  

Pendleton KE, Park SK, Hunter OV, Bresson SB, Conrad NK. Balance between MAT2A intron detention and splicing is determined co-transcriptionally. RNA  2018; 24(6):778-786. PMID:29563249. PMCID: PMC5959247.  

Park SK, Zhou X, Pendleton KE, Hunter OV, Kohler JJ, O’Donnell KA, Conrad NK. A conserved splicing silencer dynamically regulates O-GlcNAc transferase intron retention and O-GlcNAc homeostasis. Cell Reports 2017 Aug 1;20(5):1088-1099. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.07.017. PMID: 28768194.  

Pendleton KE, Chen B, Liu K, Hunter OV, Xie Y, Tu BP, Conrad NK. (2017) The U6 snRNA m(6)A Methyltransferase METTL16 Regulates SAM Synthetase Intron Retention. Cell 2017 May 169 5 824-835.e14. PMID: 28525753.   

Bresson SM, Hunter OV, Hunter AC, Conrad NK. (2015) Canonical Poly(A) Polymerase Activity Promotes the Decay of a Wide Variety of Mammalian Nuclear RNAs. PLoS Genet. 2015 Oct 20;11(10):e1005610. PMID: 26484760; PMCID: PMC4618350.  

Sei E, Wang T, Hunter OV, Xie Y, Conrad NK. (2015) HITS-CLIP analysis uncovers a link between the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus ORF57 protein and host pre-mRNA metabolism. PLoS Pathog. 2015 Feb 24;11(2):e1004652. PMID: 25710169; PMCID: PMC4339584.  

Hunter OV*, Sei E*, Richardson RB*, Conrad NK. (2013) Chromatin Immunoprecipitation and Microarray Analysis Suggest Functional Cooperation between Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus ORF57 and K-bZIP. J Virol. 2013 Apr;87(7):4005-16. PMID: 23365430. PMCID: PMC3624208. (*These authors contributed equally). 

Stubbs, S.H., Hunter, O.V., Hoover, A., and Conrad N. K. (2012) Viral factors reveal a role for REF/Aly in nuclear RNA stability. Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2012, 32(7):1260. PMID: 22290432. PMCID: PMC3302444. 

PERSONAL INTERESTS

Spending time with family, traveling to new places; 

Being out in nature, camping; 

Running and hiking;  

Other sport activities.