First name,Last name,Preferred title,Overview,Position,Department,Individual
Won-Bo,Shim,Professor and Associate Department Head,"Fungal pathogens of cereal crops can cause devastating disruption to the global food supply, and the economic loss due to crop diseases can add up to billions of dollars annually worldwide. The Shim lab at Texas A&M University focused on studying fungal pathogens of field crops, particularly Fusarium species. Notably, hazardous Fusarium mycotoxins pose a significant threat to global food safety and human health. Crop losses as well as the regulatory, testing, and management costs associated with mycotoxins in the US tops $1 billion annually.
The Genus Fusarium has had a great negative impact on agriculture and food safety but also presents a great opportunity for answering many fundamental questions. We are pursuing new discoveries that will ultimately lead to innovative tools for controlling crop diseases and mycotoxin contamination. To broaden the impact, we are actively collaborating with colleagues at Texas A&M as well as other prominent institutions worldwide. We are also very excited about our collaborations with colleagues in Texas A&M Engineering to spearhead multidisciplinary projects that can innovate plant pathology research.",Professor and Associate Department Head,Plant Pathology and Microbiology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n28234bb8
Deborah,Bell-Pedersen,Professor,"Research in the Bell-Pedersen lab focuses on determining how the circadian clock functions in organisms to regulate daily rhythms in gene expression, behavior, and physiology. The molecular clock in higher eukaryotes involves a master clock in the brain regulating clocks in peripheral tissues, posing significant obstacles for understanding circadian output mechanisms. Thus, a major strength of our work is using a single-celled model eukaryote, Neurospora crassa, to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of rhythmic gene expression and protein synthesis. Clock dysfunction in humans is associated with a wide range of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic disorders, mental illness, sleep disorders, and aging. In addition, daily changes in metabolism and cell division rates influence the efficacy and toxicity of many pharmaceuticals, including cancer drugs. Therefore, knowing how clocks work to control rhythmic gene expression, and what they regulate, is critical for the development of therapeutics. Research to understand clock-controlled rhythmic gene expression has focused primarily on transcriptional mechanisms, and little was known about posttranscriptional control. We discovered that the clock regulates highly conserved translation initiation and elongation factors, tRNA synthetase levels, and ribosome heterogeneity. This regulation determines what mRNAs are rhythmically translated and the accuracy of the translation process (translation fidelity). We are capitalizing on these exciting discoveries to determine how the clock regulates translation fidelity. These studies will provide the foundation for understanding the impact of daily rhythms in translation fidelity on protein diversity beyond what is encoded for in the genome.",Professor and Associate Department Head,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n2a2bfb97
Delbert,Gatlin,Professor and Associate Department Head,,Professor and Associate Department Head,"Rangeland, Wildlife and Fisheries Management||Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences",https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n2eb4270c
Karen,Snowden,Professor and Associate Department Head,"Parasites of public health importance, host-parasite interactions, development of animal models for the study of parasitologic diseases and treatments, and development of molecular and immunologic methods for parasitologic diagnosis.",Professor and Associate Department Head,Veterinary Pathobiology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/naab1ec85