Sabeeha S. Merchant studies photosynthesis, metabolism and how organisms manage essential metals. Her laboratory uses Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a single-celled green alga, to investigate responses to limitations of iron and copper. Such limitations raise a concrete biochemical question: which essential tasks can a biological cell maintain when several proteins compete for a scarce chemical element? [ref]
https://mcbdev.berkeley.edu/faculty/bbs/merchants. Berkeley faculty profile, Research Interests and Metal Economy
Merchant is the first author of the 2007 report of the approximately 120-million-base-pair nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The team used comparative genomics to identify candidate genes associated with chloroplasts and flagella. The organism is revealing because it combines photosynthesis with motile flagella: comparisons with photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic organisms can help distinguish these functional groups. Shared occurrence across species suggests candidate functions; experimental tests are still needed to establish what an individual protein does.[ref]
Sabeeha S. Merchant
. Portrait identified on her Berkeley Biological Sciences profile. Articles by others on the same topic
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