Meet the Lab

Lance Wells is a Distinguished Research Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Associate Director of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia.  He is a Georgia Research Alliance Endowed Distinguished Professor, former President of the Society for Glycobiology, and an ASBMB Fellow who serves on the editorial boards of Glycobiology and Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. He also serves as the PI of the NSF-funded BioFoundry in Glycoscience and as a Co-Editor-In-Chief for the upcoming 5th edition of Essentials of Glycobiology and is the Chair of the 2027 Gordon Research Conference in Glycobiology.

Dr. Linda Zhao received her Ph.D. from the Wells’ laboratory and completed a Post-doctoral Fellowship with Dr. Don Hunt at the University of Virginia before returning to the CCRC.  She is currently an associate research scientist, an expert in mass spectrometry-based approaches to interrogate post-translational modifications, with a focus on glycoproteomics.

Johnathan Mayfield received a BS in biology and a BSES in entomology from UGA in 2017. Afterwards, Johnathan spent 2 years teaching high school biology and ecology in Nashville as a part of Teach for America. Johnathan joined the Well's lab in 2020. 

Johnathan's dissertation project is focused on characterizing novel variants of O-GlcNAc Transferase (OGT) that are responsible for an intellectual disability syndrome in patients. 

David received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in 2016 and joined the Wells Lab in 2020. His research focuses on identifying novel tissue-specific regulators of the M3 glycan, an O-mannose-initiated structure that is essential for the proper function of α-dystroglycan. Defects in M3 synthesis cause forms of congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD), and this glycan also serves as a host-cell attachment site for arenavirus infection. He is broadly interested in how glycan modifications influence protein function and contribute to tissue-specific biological processes.

Terrell, of Knoxville, TN, received his BS in Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Afterwards, Terrell studied for a year at the University of South Carolina as part of an NIH post-baccalaureate research program. Terrell is now a Ph.D. Candidate in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BCMB) program, studying the substrate specificities of enzymes belonging to a unique O-mannosylation biosynthetic pathway. 

Glycoscience Trainee (GTP)

Alyssa, of Marietta GA, received her Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry from Kennesaw State University. 

Alyssa is a student in the Department of Chemistry studying, “The impact of the pHAT domain and an intellectual disability variant on the OGA interactome”.

Hari's academic foundation includes a Bachelor’s in Biotechnology from Anna University, Chennai, India and a Master’s in Technology in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India.

He is currently a graduate student in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia, conducting his research at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center under the guidance of Dr. Kelley W. Moremen and Dr. Lance Wells. 

Before joining the doctoral program through the UGA ILS program, Hari worked in the biopharmaceutical industry and specialized in developing analytical and characterization methods for recombinant biosimilar and novel therapeutic products. 

His research project focuses on understanding the N-glycan microheterogeneity of glycoproteins.