A bit about me…
How did your career path lead you to Duke?
I always knew I wanted to be involved in genetics from a young age. I was lucky enough to take a genetics course in high school which truly got me hooked in the subject area. I attended Roanoke College, where I worked as an undergraduate research assistant studying mutagenesis and genetic screening using the fungal system Coprinus cinereus. After graduating with a major in Biology and minor in Art, I obtained an industry job in RTP testing for various infectious diseases. This lab shut down which is how I ended up with a position at Duke. For few years, I worked under Dr. David Goldstein in the Center for Human Genome Variation. Eventually, I ended up moving over to MGM working under Dr. Sue Jinks-Robertson for almost 9 years. It is in this lab that I was introduced to Dr. Asiya Gusa. It has been fantastic working alongside her for years, so needless to say, I was more than ecstatic to be given the opportunity to be a part of her new lab.
What do you like to do outside of lab? Hobbies? Interests?
Outside of lab, I am usually hanging out with my husband and our two kids. We have a 3-year-old and 2-year-old and they keep me moving to say the least. Life has been so much fun with them. We also have two very large dogs that keep us busy- especially one that is completely blind and tends to walk into everything. Life is certainly chaotic outside of lab but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Prior to having kids, I used to always be out camping and kayaking. I absolutely love being outdoors. My friends know I would take a tent over a hotel room any day. My husband and I used to spend entire days out on Falls Lake or Kerr Lake. Typically, we always fish from our kayaks which has proven to be a great way to catch some big fish! We are waiting for our kids to get a bit older but soon we will start taking them camping with us.
Art is a huge part of my life outside of lab. I had my own art business for a while and would sell at craft shows and online. Especially around the holidays, I used to paint a lot of custom pet portraits. I am particularly fond of acrylic painting and wood burning, though I love to dabble in all different types of art depending on my mood. One of my favorite traditions is entering my art in the NC State Fair. I have usually fared quite well – in wood burning especially, I placed in first three years in a row.\
Publications:
Cho JE, Shaltz S, Yakovleva L, Shuman S, Jinks-Robertson S. Deletions initiated by the vaccinia virus TopIB protein in yeast. DNA Repair (Amst). 2024 Mar 6;137:103664. doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2024.103664. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38484460. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38484460/
Samantha Shaltz
Williams JD, Zhu D, García-Rubio M, Shaltz S, Aguilera A, Jinks-Robertson S. Spontaneous deamination of cytosine to uracil is biased to the non-transcribed DNA strand in yeast. DNA Repair (Amst). 2023 Mar 29;126:103489. doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2023.103489. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37018983. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37018983/
Shaltz S, Jinks-Robertson S. Mutagenic repair of a ZFN-induced double-strand break in yeast: Effects of cleavage site sequence and spacer size. DNA Repair (Amst). 2021 Dec;108:103228. doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2021.103228. Epub 2021 Sep 16. PMID: 34601383; PMCID: PMC8616830. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34601383/
Stantial N, Rogojina A, Gilbertson M, Sun Y, Miles H, Shaltz S, Berger J, Nitiss KC, Jinks-Robertson S, Nitiss JL. Trapped topoisomerase II initiates formation of de novo duplications via the nonhomologous end-joining pathway in yeast. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Oct 27;117(43):26876-26884. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2008721117. Epub 2020 Oct 12. PMID: 33046655; PMCID: PMC7604471. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33046655/
Gamble D, Shaltz S, Jinks-Robertson S. Recombinational Repair of Nuclease-Generated Mitotic Double-Strand Breaks with Different End Structures in Yeast. G3 (Bethesda). 2020 Oct 5;10(10):3821-3829. doi: 10.1534/g3.120.401603. PMID: 32826304; PMCID: PMC7534431. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32826304/
Shashi V, Xie P, Schoch K, Goldstein DB, Howard TD, Berry MN, Schwartz CE, Cronin K, Sliwa S, Allen A, Need AC. The RBMX gene as a candidate for the Shashi X-linked intellectual disability syndrome. Clin Genet. 2015 Oct;88(4):386-90. doi: 10.1111/cge.12511. Epub 2014 Dec 5. PMID: 25256757. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25256757/
