Joshua Gendron, PhD

B.S. UCSD, 2000

Ph.D. Stanford University, 2008, Advisor: Zhi-Yong Wang

Postdoctoral Research, UCSD, Advisor: Steve Kay

Postdoctoral Research, UCSD, Advisor: Eric Bennett

Professor Gendron has 18 years of experience studying the genetic and molecular basis of how organisms react to environmental cues. He performed his Ph.D. in Dr. Zhi-Yong Wang’s lab at Stanford University/ Carnegie Institution for Science where he studied the brassinosteroid signaling pathway in Arabidopsis with an emphasis on discovering and mechanistically describing signaling pathway components. In addition, he described how brassinosteroids control growth and organogenesis. He performed his post-doctoral research in Dr. Steve Kay’s lab at the University of California, San Diego and University of Southern California where he investigated transcriptional networks in the circadian clock of Arabidopsis. He was funded by a Ruth L. Kirchstein NRSA award from the NIH. Furthermore, he spent one year as a visiting scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Bennett at University of California, San Diego studying mammalian protein degradation mechanisms and learning mass spectrometry techniques and analysis. As an assistant professor at Yale University, he runs a research program that reveals the interplay of protein degradation and daily timing mechanisms in eukaryotes using reverse genetics and biochemistry in the model plant Arabidopsis. His work impacts our understanding of how plants sense and respond to environmental cues with the goal of making crops robust to rapidly changing climates. The work in the laboratory is supported by the National Science Foundation.

The work in the Gendron lab focuses on how protein degradation controls the circadian clock in plants and how plants determine the seasons. The lab uses protein engineering, mass spectrometry, and forward and reverse genetic approaches to investigate how the ubiquitin proteasome system couples the circadian clock to downstream biological processes such as metabolism, cell growth, and cell differentiation.