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James Gagnon

Assistant Professor


Graduate Program Membership:

Office/Building: CSC 324B
Phone: 801-581-5716
Email: james.gagnon@utah.edu
Gagnon Lab: http://www.gagnonlab.org/

Research Statement


Our lab studies how animals grow and maintain themselves in a dynamic environment. We generate genetic tools for manipulating genomes that will lead to a quantitative understanding of vertebrate development, organ homeostasis, and responses to infection, injury, and ecological pressures.

Research Interests


General Interests

Selected Publications


  • Takasugi PR*, Wang S*, Truong KT*, Drage EP, Kanishka SN, Higbee MA, Bamidele N, Ojelabi O, Sontheimer EJ, Gagnon JA. Orthogonal CRISPR-Cas tools for genome editing, inhibition, and CRISPR recording in zebrafish embryos. Genetics, 2021
  • Balla KM, Rice MC, Gagnon JA, Elde NC. Linking virus discovery to immune responses visualized during zebrafish infections. Current Biology, 2020.
  • Raj B, Wagner DW, McKenna A, Pandey S, Klein AM, Shendure J, Gagnon JA*, Schier AF*. Simultaneous single-cell profiling of lineages and cell types in the vertebrate brain by scGESTALT. Nature Biotechnology, 2018.
  • Gagnon JA, Obbad K, Schier AF. The primary role of zebrafish nanog is in extraembryonic tissue. Development, 2018.
  • McKenna A*, Findlay G*, Gagnon JA*, Horwitz M, Schier AF, Shendure J. Whole organism lineage tracing by combinatorial and cumulative genome editing. Science, 2016.