Plant Molecular Biology (PMB) Track

Dr. Jacob is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at Université de Montréal specializing in Biochemistry. He moved to the U.S. to pursue a doctoral degree in Plant Genetics at Indiana University (Bloomington), where he worked on the molecular genetics of flowering time and the epigenetic regulation of genome stability in plants. Dr. Jacob was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory/Howard Hughes Medical Institute in New York studying the roles of histone variants in the regulation of gene expression and genome stability. His current scientific interests are centered on understanding how epigenetic mechanisms affect genome stability, using plants as model systems, and also on developing new technologies to facilitate genome engineering in plants.

Dr. Bleichert’s research focuses on understanding the operating principles of macromolecular machines involved in chromosome replication and in the maintenance of genome stability using a combination of structural biology, biochemical, biophysical, and cellular approaches. She obtained her PhD from Yale University in 2010 working on ribosome biogenesis, and afterwards performed her postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow, and then at Johns Hopkins Medical School. As a postdoctoral fellow, she determined the structure of the eukaryotic initiator complex, a key component in the assembly pathway of the DNA replication machinery. Since 2017, Dr. Bleichert has been an independent research group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. She will join Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry as an Assistant Professor in January 2020.

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Prof. Gary Brudvig earned his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the Yale faculty in 1982. In addition to serving as a professor in and chair of the Department of Chemistry, he is also Director of the Energy Sciences Institute on Yale's West Campus, is a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry and is affiliated with the Yale Center for Green Chemistry.Brudvig is the project leader of a team of Yale chemists and other scientists who, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, are hoping to improve the efficiency of solar-energy utilization. Its aim is to attach manganese complexes to titanium dioxide nanoparticles in order to develop a system that will efficiently produce renewable fuel using solar energy.From 1983 to 1986, Brudvig was a Searle Scholar at Yale. The Searle Scholarship program supports outstanding work by junior faculty members at select academic institutions. He was the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar, a distinction given to “talented young faculty in the chemical sciences,” from 1985 to 1990. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow 1986-1988.Brudvig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.

Alex Cantó-Pastor is an Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. He obtained his B.Sc. in Biotechnology at Universitat Politècnica de València. He then received his Ph.D. in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, working in Prof. David Baulcombe’s lab. There he worked the regulation plant disease resistance genes by small RNAs. Most recently, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Davis, in the laboratory of Prof. Siobhan Brady. While at UC Davis, he studied cell type specific regulatory networks in plant development, investigating root cell type differentiation. His current research focuses on how plants let some beneficial soil microbes into their roots while keeping pathogens at bay. His lab combines computational and molecular approaches to identify key genes in plant-microbe interactions, and manipulate these genes to enhance the benefits of such relationships. The goal of this work is to provide insight and tools that tackle the global challenges of food security and sustainable agricultural production.

Prof. Dellaporta studied at the University of Rhode Island (1972-76), Iowa State University (1976-78) and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1978-81). His postdoctoral studies in plant molecular genetics were conducted at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1981-83). He has held positions of Staff Scientist at Cold Spring Harbor (1983-86), Assistant (1986-89), Associate (1990-96) and Full Professor (1996-present) in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. His research program has focused on the genomic and computational biology of agronomic traits in crops such as of maize, rice and other cereals, including contributions to the identification and utility of of genetic diversity. He has co-authored numerous publications in scientific journals such as Cell, Nature, Science, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sciences, and Genetics, among others, and has served on the scientific advisory panels at the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture. Dr. Dellaporta has served a member of the Board of Control of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for 10 years.

B.S. UCSD, 2000Ph.D. Stanford University, 2008, Advisor: Zhi-Yong WangPostdoctoral Research, UCSD, Advisor: Steve KayPostdoctoral Research, UCSD, Advisor: Eric BennettProfessor 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.

Dr. Vivian Irish is the Daniel C. Eaton Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. She obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she characterized the role of the DPP/TGFbeta signaling pathway in specifying dorsal-ventral polarity in the Drosophila embryo. After postdoctoral work investigating anterior-posterior patterning in Drosophila, she turned her attention to exploring patterning processes in the Arabidopsis flower. For a number of years she has focused on characterizing the genes and pathways regulating organogenesis and growth in the flower. She has also explored the extent to which these pathways are conserved across different flowering plant species. Using molecular, genetic and modeling approaches, her current research is centered on understanding how cells and tissues are patterned, epigenetic control of developmental processes, and how stem cell activity is regulated in plants. Additionally, part of her work focuses on biotechnological applications to improve agriculture.

Dr. Malaker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University. Her laboratory is focused on establishing methods and technology to study mucins, a class of densely O-glycosylated extracellular proteins, by MS. Additionally, the laboratory studies mucins in a biological context, since these proteins play integral, yet poorly understood, roles in numerous diseases. Prior to her appointment at Yale, she received her B.S. from the University of Michigan in Biochemistry and Anthropology-Zoology. Dr. Malaker then went on to receive her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in the laboratory of Professor Donald Hunt. She continued to investigate the role of aberrant glycosylation in cancer as an NIH postdoctoral fellow in Professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s laboratory at Stanford University before starting at Yale in 2021.

Binyam Mogessie is faculty in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Yale University. Binyam was born and raised in Ethiopia and moved to Germany where he studied biochemistry and cell biology at Jacobs University Bremen. He then moved to the UK for his PhD first at the Marie Curie Research Institute in Surrey and later at the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology in Warwick, where he investigated the molecular mechanisms that organize the microtubule cytoskeleton during skeletal muscle differentiation and cell division. After receiving his PhD in cell biology from the University of London, he joined the MRC-LMB in Cambridge (and later at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany), where he discovered a function of the actin cytoskeleton in accurate chromosome segregation during female . In 2019, Binyam established his independent research laboratory as a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale fellow and HFSP Young Investigator at the University of Bristol. He joined the Yale MCDB faculty in July 2022 where his lab continues mechanistic cell biology studies of female meiosis and reproductive longevity.

Anna Marie Pyle is a Sterling Professor in the Departments of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and the Department of Chemistry.She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 1997. Dr. Pyle obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University in 1990, where she worked with Professor Jacqueline Barton. Dr. Pyle was a postdoctoral fellow with Thomas Cech at the University of Colorado, forming her own research group in 1992 in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center. In 2002, she moved to Yale University, where she leads a research group that specializes in structure and function of large RNA molecules, RNA remodeling enzymes and cellular RNA sensors. Dr. Pyle teaches the undergraduate Molecular Biology course and serves on the University Budget Committee at Yale. Dr. Pyle is the President of the RNA Society and she served as the Chair of the MSFA Study Section at the NIH after serving as permanent member on the MSFE, and MGB study sections. She is Vice-Chair of the Science and Technology Steering Committee at Brookhaven National Labs and she is on the Board of Telluride Science Research Center.  She is involved in the development of RNA as a therapeutic and a drug target, serving on the SAB of Arrakis Therapeutics.  Dr. Pyle is the author of over 190 publications and has mentored more than 40 graduate students and postdocs. The Pyle laboratory uses structural biology, enzymology and cell biology understand the structural complexity of large RNA molecules and the proteins that recognize them. She solved the first structures of pre-mRNA splicing machines, and led efforts to characterize RNA structures in noncoding RNAs and viral genomes. Dr. Pyle pioneered the study of RNA helicase enzymes and antiviral innate immune receptors in mammalian cells.

Scott Strobel is the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry (MB&B) and University Provost.  Scott joined the Yale faculty in 1995 and served as department chair from 2006-09.  From 2011-2019 he has served as Vice President for West Campus Planning & Program Development where he has orchestrated the emergence of the West Campus as a research and educational center of the University.  In July 2014 he took on additional responsibility as the inaugural Deputy Provost for Teaching & Learning.  In this capacity, he oversaw the creation of the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, housed within the York Street wing of Sterling Memorial Library. As a professor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professor he instituted a program to explore microbial and chemical diversity in the world’s rainforests as a means to inspire undergraduate students in the sciences.  He chaired the University Science Strategy Committee which was tasked with developing a ten-year strategic plan for the sciences and engineering at Yale.  In 2019 as Vice Provost for Science Initiatives, he was charged with implementing that plan.  He began as Provost in 2020.  He was awarded the Dylan Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences, the Graduate Mentoring Award in the Sciences and the Yale Science and Engineering Award for Meritorious Service.  His research group explores the chemical basis of RNA function and the role of the fluoride ion channel in cellular fluoride detoxification.