Emily Puckett
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eepuckett.bsky.social
Emily Puckett
@eepuckett.bsky.social
1.1K followers 740 following 250 posts
Associate Professor in Biology at the University of Memphis | Phylogeography and the genetic basis of traits in American black bears | Secretary Int Assoc for Bear Research & Management 🐼🐻🐻‍❄️
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eepuckett.bsky.social
We want to see the structures inside of #bear hair, but it's too pigmented. So off to the beauty supply store we went!
Fun day in the lab 🐻
#overlyhonestmethods
Lightening some brown bear hair. A piece of silver tin foil sits on top of a black lab bench, with hairs smeared with the cream and powder combination lightener which was applied with a violet sparkle brush. A man's digital watch is to the left counting 6 minutes 8 seconds, as the lightening process is to be checked every 5 minutes according to the knowledgeable woman at the beauty supply store. Supplies from the beauty supply store: 40 volume cream lightener, a packet of powder lightener, and a violet sparkle application brush.
September 29, 2025 at 6:14 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
My favorite picture of my cat Natasha. She slurped down into the cushions and was chillin’, then I caught her yawning.
A thin grey between the arm rest and cushion of a grey couch with her right arm wrapped around and holding on to the couch. Mouth is agape like she is talking.
June 7, 2025 at 3:04 AM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Someone’s feelin’ feisty this #caturday following unexpected surgery yesterday! But when you eat all the tails off your mice toys, there are consequences in your tum-tum.
A brown tabby cat with white paws and neck and green eyes walks around her house. Her tail is up in exploring mode and she has a calm facial expression.
May 17, 2025 at 9:35 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Oh the dill pickle toy! It is for sliding across the room, not throwing to give chase. It lands with a mighty thud.
An orange cat lays on its side on a grey sofa holding a large lime green cat toy with its front left paw while the cat also licks the toy.
May 15, 2025 at 3:13 AM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Champagne, the Met issue, and #Swiftologist
So… back on my BS this Saturday night
Looking out into a living room with a TV in the background and the Swiftologist YouTube channel playing. In the foreground, a round coffee table with a glass of wine to the left and a Vogue magazine in the center. The magazine cover features a handsome man in a kelly green corduroy suit.
April 27, 2025 at 1:52 AM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Here’s my girls’ album cover.
#caturday
Two cats sitting on top of a low cat tower. The cat in the back and to the left is mostly white, with orange blotches, gold eyes, and a tipped ear. The cat in the front is brown with a white belly, green eyes, no ear tip, and a disgruntled face having to share space with her sister.
April 19, 2025 at 6:55 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
A little Stanford fun- creating a Turing pattern to be displayed on the LEDs on the side of the Bass Biology building.
March 10, 2025 at 6:24 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Huckleberry is in the holiday spirit and helping to fluff the #ChristmasTree.

Wishing all your most beautiful memories of Kirby are near to remember.
An orange cat sits on two branches of a fraiser fir Christmas tree inside a house. In the background are cat beds which give perspective that the cat is around 4 feet off the ground.
December 20, 2024 at 3:49 AM
eepuckett.bsky.social
One of my team members gifted me this thoughtful teddy bear to wish me bon voyage.
A small brown teddy bear with a red shirt that has the Stanford University logo, a capital red S with an evergreen tree in front, sits in front of a potted plant that has grown all to the left and fans around the stuffed animal.
December 18, 2024 at 10:41 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Biggest congratulations to @pollardmd.bsky.social on his PhD graduation!!
December 15, 2024 at 6:06 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Further, we used gene set enrichment to identify pathways which were associated with diet, these included: metabolism of amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates; small molecule transport; digestion; and heme degradation.
6/n
A network diagram that associates individual gene pathways into larger biologically relevant groupings. Seven top level groups cluster 26 total pathways into: biological oxidation, amino acid metabolism, lipid metabolism, transport of small molecules, heme degradation, digestion and absorption, and carbohydrate metabolism.
December 1, 2024 at 4:41 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
RERconverge can give significant results due to relaxation of or increased constraint. For the 6 genes identified, constraint was relaxed as diet shifted towards more herbivory; but constraint did not change as carnivory increased.
5/n
Two panels from the paper for two different genes. The points represent the change in carnivory score where yellow means a lineage became more carnivorous compared to its ancestor, and purple means the lineage became more herbivorous. A scale bar for those colors is underneath the panels and goes purple, pink, orange, yellow in an ombre. Each panel has change in carnivory score on the x-axis and relative evolutionary rate on the y-axis. A thick black line shows the correlation among all the points. Two thinner blue lines estimate the same correlation but only for points less than or more than 0 on the x-axis. The patterns between the two plots are the same, such that the correlation is significant on the left but not the right side of the plots.
December 1, 2024 at 4:38 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
We used RERconverge to compare the rate of substitution accumulation per gene to the rate of change in the trait.
Six genes had a correlation between evolutionary rate and change in diet phenotype; these genes have high expression in liver and kidneys.
4/n
A five panel figure from a scientific paper. The upper left panel shows results of a correlation score for 15,000 genes on the x-axis, and a significance value on the y-axis. Most dots are grey and below a significance threshold; but six dots are in red and labeled with their gene name. The upper right panel shows a drawing of organs as organized in humans, specifically liver, pancreas, kidneys, small and large intestines, and the tibial artery going to the legs. The liver and kidneys are shown in red; tibial artery in purple; all other organs in grey or white. The second row has three panels similar to the upper left panel with mostly grey dots indicating a lack of significance, but some red or purple dots that are discussed in the associated paper. Left to right, the plots represent tissues, gene pathways, and mouse phenotypes significantly enriched for different gene evolutionary rate relative to diet.
December 1, 2024 at 4:34 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
My husband and my first cat, Tatum nursing her babies. All three boys were orange, and the girls were tabby.
15/fin
An orange female cat at the top of the picture on her side. Four very young kittens are nursing, two brown (Lily and Cinco de Gato) and two orange (One-Eye and Papi). A fifth kitten (Juan) is laying on his back, full belly in the air, clearly in a milk-coma, while three of his siblings partially sit on him. There is a blue oriental rug that everyone is laying on.
November 24, 2024 at 8:01 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
My favorite picture of the family we fostered last year, all orange cats! Left to Right: Asa, Marigold, Butternut (aka- Grumpus), and Otis.
We kept Marigold and the boys are in homes now.
14/n
Four orange and white cats sit in a row on a grey couch next to an open window. The cat on the left is sitting and looking out the window. The next cat is standing and looking out the window. The third cat is sitting but turned around to look at the camera with a calm expression. The rightmost cat is sitting on the couch arm looking out the window. There is a sunny fall day showing in the sunlight moving through slightly yellow leaves in the background.
November 24, 2024 at 7:58 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Here is me and the first cat I rescue trapped who I called Dinner Date because I would feed her dinner to gain her trust.
13/n
A woman to the left of the picture and slightly off camera sits on a wooden patio with a small orange cat in the background eating from a white bowl with blue stripes. Between them is an open can of cat food and a plastic fork. The woman is looking at the camera and the cat is looking at the bowl.
November 24, 2024 at 7:52 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
As promised, cat pictures…
This is me and my shy and goofy male cat Huckleberry.
12/n
A woman in a purple jacket on the right and slightly off camera holds an orange cat who is centered in the shot. The cat looks into the camera with a slightly concerned look on his face but otherwise perky ears and large gold eyes.
November 24, 2024 at 7:48 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
They then show that a subunit of PKA that is needed to turn on the pigment pathway is depleted because Arhgap36 binds this protein, then shuttles it to be degraded.
Thus, the black pigment pathway is never turned on, even though the cAMP signal is present.
9/n
A schematic diagram of an orange pigment cell detailing the interactions among proteins and gene regulation. An active Mc1r increases cAMP in the cell. cAMP binds the regulatory region of the gene PKA. But Arhgap36 binds the catalytic region of PKA, such that it is not bound to the regulatory region. Thus, PKA catalytic cannot aid CREB to get inside the nucleus to turn on Mitf. Since Mitf expression is low, its downstream targets Tyrp1, Dct, and Pmel are also low. Those genes are needed to make black pigment; so instead, yellow or red pigment is made.
November 24, 2024 at 7:34 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Since Arhgap36 is not actually a gene that makes black pigment, they then compared gene expression of genes that are in the pigment pathway. They saw that orange animals had lower gene expression of pigment producing genes than black animals.
7/n
A figure from the paper that is a bar chart. Grey bars represent data from nonorange animals, and orange bars represent data from orange animals. The x-axis are four different genes in the pigment pathway. The y-axis is mRNA expression level from cat skin. Each of the four genes tested shows lower gene expression in orange cats because the orange bars are lower than the grey bars. Stars above each comparison indicate significant difference based on P-value.
November 24, 2024 at 7:28 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
They then showed that this results in greater gene expression of Arhgap36 in cat skin of orange but not black cats.

This is surprising because Arhgap36 is not normally expressed in skin. Instead, it is found in the adrenal gland, the hypothalamus, and the pituitary gland.
6/n
A figure from the paper showing bar charts in grey (for nonorange cat data) and orange (for orange cat data). The x-axis has seven gene names; the y-axis is the mRNA levels in cat skin. Most of the bars are similar in height, except for the orange bar for Arhgap36 which is 13 times larger than the corresponding grey bar. There is a star above those two bars indicating P-value significance.
November 24, 2024 at 7:25 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
By comparing whole genome sequencing data between an orange and a not orange cat, they identified a 5,074 basepair deletion within a gene called Arhgap36. Meaning orange animals have 5kilobases of DNA that is missing.
5/n
Figure from paper showing continuous depth of sequencing coverage in nonorange cat, a track below it where the 5 kilobase DNA deletion occurs in orange tracks (and thus no sequencing data), then below that a gene model of Arhgap36 relative to the location of the deletion.
November 24, 2024 at 7:21 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
It's well understood that the causative locus that makes cats orange is on the X chromosome. This was worked out by comparing the color of males and females in crosses, and the color of their #kittens.
Two Punnett Squares showing a reciprocal cross. On the left, a black male parent and female orange parent produce calico female kittens and male orange kittens. On the right, an orange male parent and black female parent produce calico female kittens and black male kittens.
November 24, 2024 at 7:13 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Patterns between reference genomes were variable but depended on the specific test.
November 22, 2024 at 3:41 PM
eepuckett.bsky.social
Two years ago tonight, #Memphis was getting chilly and we decided the outdoor #cat we were feeding needed to come inside. Her name is Clementine. She loves to play, hates to lose a wrestling match, is the household championship of bug-not-bug, and is beautifully expressive.
The author’s cat, named Clementine, in a reverse C shape while air snuggling. Clementine is brown with black stripes, a white belly, and big green eyes.
October 29, 2024 at 2:07 AM
eepuckett.bsky.social
The kind note I got on my breeky sando after saying I was dressed-up because I had a tough meeting today.
A foil wrapper with “you’ve got this, smiley face” written on top.
October 3, 2024 at 12:35 PM