Founding Participating Faculty

The University of California San Diego

Steve A. Kay, PhD   Dr. Steve Kay is currently the Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and holds the Richard C. Atkinson Chair in Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He is also and Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. Previously he was Chairman, Department of Biochemistry, Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla where he was a faculty member from 1996 to 2007. His academic research concerns the molecular genetic basis of circadian rhythms in plants, animals and humans. He was also recently the Director of Discovery Research at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), where he built a large Department applying high throughput human genome science to biomedical research and drug discovery. Dr. Kay was also the founder, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Phenomix Corporation, a drug discovery and development company based in San Diego. Dr. Kay received his bachelors’ degree in biochemistry from the University of Bristol in 1981 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the same institute in 1985. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University from 1985-1989, and then Assistant Professor there from 1989-1992 where he established his research program in identifying many of the first circadian rhythm genes of plants and animals. In 1992 Dr. Kay joined the University of Virginia, where he developed real-time luciferase reporter technology for measuring subcellular events in live plants and animals. This technology was used to identify several key clock genes in both systems using genetic screens. Dr. Kay joined TSRI in 1996 where his work has further expanded our knowledge of the molecular components and mechanism of action of circadian clocks, ranging from the mechanism of daylength sensing in plants to behavioral control in mammals. He is widely considered a pioneer in Systems Biology and high throughput approaches to understanding biological networks. His current interests surround the implementation of genomic tools in photosynthetic microbes for biofuels production. Dr. Kay serves as a founder and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Biolight LLC, an algae feedstock start-up company. Dr. Kay has received several awards, including a Keck Foundation Faculty Award in 1992, the Honma Prize for Life Sciences in 1999 and his work was cited in Science magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year” consecutively in 1997, 1998 and again in 2002. In 2008 he was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Steven Briggs, PhD., Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Briggs was the first person to isolate and characterize a plant gene for resistance to infectious disease, as well as the first to discover a natural mechanism for plant resistance to infection. He also invented the first reverse genetics technology for plants, which is still widely used in maize research, and was the first to use artificial transcription factors to regulate endogenous genes in plants. In 1998, Dr. Briggs founded the Torrey Mesa Research Institute (originally the Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute). As President and CEO of TMRI, he produced a draft sequence of the rice genome, which provided a framework for genomics in all other grass crops (maize, wheat, barley, oats, rye, and sugarcane). Under his direction TMRI created the first plant (Arabidopsis) GeneChip, the first reverse genetics technology for Arabidopsis, and the first large-scale plant proteome (rice). Prior to founding TMRI, Dr. Briggs was Research Director at Pioneer Hi-Bred International, where he supervised the combined genomics program between Pioneer and DuPont. Dr. Briggs received his B.S. in botany from the University of Vermont, and his Ph.D. in plant pathology from Michigan State University.

Susan Golden, PhD., Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego, and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Golden has been at the forefront of cyanobacterial genetics and molecular biology almost since its inception. During her graduate work she developed genetic tools for the first cyanobacterium shown to be transformable, Synechococcus elongatus (PCC 7942). After earning her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Missouri in 1983 she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. She joined the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University in 1986 as an Assistant Professor and identified novel regulatory mechanisms by which light regulates the expression of photosynthesis genes. As part of that work she developed genetic and molecular strategies to allow gene expression to be monitored by light production— bioluminescence—in S. elongatus. In the early 1990s she began a collaborative project in which this ability to track gene expression through bioluminescence was used to demonstrate that cyanobacteria have a 24 h biological clock (circadian clock) as do plants and animals. As a result of this work, S. elongatus has become the premier experimental model for a bacterial circadian clock. Dr. Golden continues to be a pioneer in this field, combining genetics, protein biochemistry, and cell biology to understand how the clock keeps time, controls cellular functions, and remains synchronized with the daily light and dark cycle. She has recently initiated projects in metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria for the production of biofuels and co-products. Dr. Golden was honored by promotion to Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University in 2003, and joined the UCSD faculty in fall 2008.

Mike Burkart, PhD., Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. The research in the Burkart laboratory follows a general program of developing systems for the study of natural product regulation and production. Research in the Burkart lab has made valuable contributions in the areas of biological chemistry, natural products, and molecular diagnostics and has attracted significant attention from bioorganic, chemical, biological, medical, and engineering communities. In the biofuel arena, Prof. Burkart discovered a unique proteomic strategy for the study of fatty acid biosynthetic enzymes in vivo and has developed these tools to optimize and engineer fatty acid biosynthetic pathways. The application of these tools to single-cellular algae has been an ongoing collaborative project between the Burkart and Mayfield labs since 2003. Prof. Burkart received a BA in Chemistry from Rice University (1994), a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Scripps Research Institute (1999) and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School (1999-2002). He began his research at UC San Diego in 2002 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008. He has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award, Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award, Hellman Fellowship, American Cancer Society Research Scholarship, and Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.

James W. Golden, PhD., Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. J. Golden is one of the leading scientists investigating the genetics and molecular biology of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria. As a postdoc, he studied the molecular biology of cyanobacteria and discovered that nitrogen-fixation (nif) genes undergo developmentally programmed DNA rearrangements. As a faculty member at Texas A&M University, he was the first to develop reverse genetics (gene knockout) techniques for cyanobacteria that form specialized nitrogen-fixing cells called heterocysts. Later, he identified the patS gene, which encodes a small peptide signal molecule that controls the developmental pattern of cyanobacterial heterocysts. His current basic research involves various aspects of the regulation of gene expression in cyanobacteria, including the roles of sigma factors, mechanisms of nif gene expression, and pathways of cyclic-di-GMP signaling. His laboratory has developed many molecular and genetic tools for the study of filamentous cyanobacteria. More recently, his research program has expanded into metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria for the production of biofuels. Dr. J. Golden received a B.S. (1977) in Microbiology from the University of Maryland-College Park, and a Ph.D. (1983) in Biology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He joined the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University in 1986, and moved to UCSD in the fall 2008.

The Scripps Research Institute

Stephen Mayfield: Professor of Cell Biology and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. Dr. Mayfield’s lab studies translational regulation in the eukaryotic algae
C. reinhardtii and the use of this alga for the production of human therapeutic proteins. Over the last year we have achieved expression of a human anti-anthrax antibody in algae, and expression of a bovine serum amyloid protein to very high levels, 5% of total protein. Last year we solved the structure of the cytoplasmic ribosome to 20 Ang., and more recently we have solved the structure of the chloroplast ribosome to below 15 Ang. These structures should help us understand the basic tenets of translation in plants. Dr. Mayfield is working closely with DOE and academic institutions in the algal bioenergy area and is a co-founder of Sapphire Energy a successful algae biofuels startup in San Diego.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Mark Hildebrand, PhD., Research Associate Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dr. Hildebrand’s research is focused on marine diatoms. His work uses gene expression and transformation technologies to understanding the cell and molecular biology of diatom growth and development. Using genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, transgenic, and high resolution imaging approaches is a major research focus. Another major interest is in the use of diatoms as a source of lipids for biofuels production, which includes understanding mechanisms controlling lipid synthesis and carbon partitioning. His interests include development of “universal” transgenic approaches that could be applied to multiple species in a genus, or even to an entire class of algae. These approaches would be applied to understand the regulation of lipid synthesis, and to generate transgenics or isolate mutant strains for large-scale production.

B. Greg Mitchell, PhD., Dr. Mitchell received his Bachelor of Science degree with honors in Aquatic Biology and Special Honors in Botany from the University of Texas at Austin and his Doctoral degree in Biology from the University of Southern California. From 1988 to the present he has been a Research Scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. From 1990-1992 Dr. Mitchell served as Program Manager for the Ocean Biochemistry Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, and also was Program Scientist for the SeaWiFS and MODIS ocean color satellite missions. His research on phytoplankton photosynthesis, phytoplankton growth models, plankton ecology, ocean optics and satellite remote sensing has been sponsored by NASA, ONR, NSF, NOAA and the Japanese space agency. Dr. Mitchell has published more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and more than 175 conference proceedings or abstracts for national and international scientific meetings. His present research focuses on use of satellites to monitor change in global ocean ecosystems, ecophysiology of algal communities in response to iron limitation, modeling primary production of the Antarctic Ocean, and development of laser spectroscopic methods to characterize algal communities and their physiology. For more than 2 decades he has promoted mass culture of algae to mitigate CO2 and wastewater nutrient loading, and to create biomass for fuel and animal food and he currently serves on as a member of the Board of Directors of the Algal Biomass Organization. The focus of his research on algae commercial applications is quantification of yields of bioenergy molecules in the light-temperature-nutrient matrix that regulates algal physiology, numerical modeling of algal growth and biomass yields, and design of photobioreactors that optimize commercial yields.