Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology

2018-19 General Catalog

430 Physical Sciences Building
Telephone (831) 459-4719
FAX (831) 459-3524
http://www.metx.ucsc.edu

Program Statement | Course Descriptions


Faculty and Professional Interests

Victoria Auerbuch Stone, Associate Professor
Interactions between bacterial pathogens and the innate immune system

Manel Camps, Associate Professor
Evolution of drug resistance with a focus on genetic adaptation and plasmid homeostasis

A. Russell Flegal, Professor Emeritus

Karen Ottemann, Professor
How bacterial pathogens are able to chronically colonize mammalian hosts and cause disease outcomes such as inflammation and cancer

Chad Saltikov, Professor
Microbial processes that influence the biotransformation of pollutants in the environment

Donald R. Smith, Professor
Neurotoxicity, cellular and organismal responses to environmental toxins

Fitnat Yildiz, Professor
Understanding processes controlling transmission of bacterial pathogens

Adjunct Professor

Paul Blum
Repurposing bacterial toxins for therapeutic uses and genetics of microbial extremophiles

Ron Oremland
Microbial metabolism of reduced gases and of toxic elements, especially in extreme environments (e.g., Mono Lake)

Associate Adjunct Professor

Myra Finkelstein
Human impacts to wildlife with an emphasis on contaminant-induced effects

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Affiliated Faculty Who Sponsor METX Students

Adina Paytan, Research Scientist, Institute of Marine Sciences
Biogeochemistry, paleoceanography, environmental and aquatic chemistry

Jonathan Zehr (Ocean Sciences)
Aquatic microbial ecology, biological oceanography

Additional Affiliated Faculty

Environmental Toxicology

Don Croll (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
Foraging ecology of marine sea birds and mammals, island conservation/ecology

Andrew Fisher (Earth and Planetary Sciences)
Hydrology, crustal studies, heat flow modeling

Raphael Kudela (Ocean Sciences)
Ecological modeling and remote sensing, satellite oceanography, phytoplankton ecology and harmful algal blooms

Matthew McCarthy (Ocean Sciences)
Marine organic geochemistry and chemical oceanography, global biogeochemical cycles, compound-specific isotopes and radio carbon

Peter T. Raimondi (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
Applied marine ecology

Cellular Toxicology

Lindsay Hinck (Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology)
Breast development and cancer, cell biology, and development

Theodore Holman (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Bioinorganics and biological chemistry

Pradip K. Mascharak (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Bioinorganic chemistry, design of antitumor drugs, modeling of active sites of metalloenzymes, design of catalysts for hydrocarbon oxidation, studies on intermediates in non-heme oxygenase chemistry, design of NO-donors for photodynamic therapy

Glenn Millhauser (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Electron paramagnetic resonance; nuclear magnetic resonance, protein structure and function, peptide synthesis, prions, melanocortin signaling

Martha Zuniga (Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology Biology)
Negative selection of autoreactive T cells in the thymus and in peripheral lymphoid organs, immunological tolerance to epithelial antigens, MHC transfer between keratinocytes and dendritic cells

Microbiology

Grant Hartzog (Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology)
Biochemistry, genetics, chromatin and transcriptional regulation

Douglas R. Kellogg (Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology)
Control of cell growth and size

Todd Lowe (Biomolecular Engineering)
Experimental and computational genomics, ncRNA gene finders, and high-throughput RNA sequencing to study the biology of extremophile archaea and bacteria

Nader Pourmand (Biomolecular Engineering)
Director, UCSC Genomics Sequencing Center

Development of new tools and technologies that integrate biology, electronics, and nanofabrication for the detection and study of genes and proteins

Joshua Stuart (Biomolecular Engineering)
Computational genomics

Revised: 07/15/18