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For a schedule of all Rausser College of Natural Resources events, seminars, and lectures visit our calendar.
Get ready for the holiday season with a tree from the central Sierra Nevada, fresh cut by UC Berkeley Forestry Club students!
Sale Dates Sunday, Dec 8th - 8am to 4pm (or until sold out)
Monday, Dec 9th to Wednesday Dec. 11th - 4pm-6pm (or until sold out)
We are interested in the biology of a small, evolutionarily related group of fungi that cause disease in healthy humans. These environmental fungi are exquisitely responsive to mammalian body temperature, which triggers drastic changes in cell shape and the induction of virulence properties. We dissect temperature-dependent signaling in these organisms to reveal fundamental molecular paradigms with broad significance to our understanding of cellular circuits. We study the circuitry used to establish and maintain thermosensation in these simple eukaryotic pathogens and elucidate how temperature-induced fungal effectors manipulate the biology of innate immune cells. Ultimately we hope fundamental discoveries can be applied to a variety of biological contexts, including generating synthetic temperature-response circuits and harnessing fungal effectors as immunomodulatory agents during disease.
Our limited understanding of plant systems and the dearth of genetic tools constrain our ability to engineer plants effectively for diverse applications, including agriculture, sustainability, human health, and bioenergy. However, the field of synthetic biology has opened the door to new possibilities, enabling us to introduce heterologous metabolic pathways or create entirely new-to-nature compounds that don't naturally exist in plants. As future endeavors in plant metabolic engineering become increasingly complex, we have also developed a suite of synthetic biology tools to enhance our ability to modify and manipulate plant genomes. Finally, we also leverage synthetic biology approaches to study the origins and evolution of rubisco in order to provide novel insights into the biophysical and evolutionary constraints potentially limiting photosynthesis.
