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People

Principal Investigator


Thomas D. Sharkey, PhD
tsharkey@msu.edu
Thomas D. Sharkey
  • Ph.D., 1980 Michigan State University
  • B.S. 1974, Michigan State University
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, 1980-1982, Australian National University
  • Assist./Assoc. Research Professor, 1982-1987, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV
  • Assist. Professor, 1987-1988, Assoc. Professor, 1988-1991, Professor, 1991-2008, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Highly Cited Researcher, Institute for Scientific Information

Postdocs


  

Sean E. Weise, PhD
Lab Manager
weisesea@msu.edu

Sean Weise received his M.S. in Botany from Miami University in Oxford Ohio in 1999 and his PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. Sean was a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Center in Norwich England from 2005 - 2007 and rejoined the Sharkey Lab in Biochemistry at Michigan State University as Post-Doc and Lab Manager in 2008.

Dennis Gray, PhD
grayden@msu.edu		  
   

Graduate Students


 
Aparajita Banerjee
banerj12@msu.edu

Aparajita Banerjee received her M.Sc. from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2005. After that she completed her MS in Chemistry from Michigan State University in 2008. She then joined the PhD program at the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University in 2008. Currently, she is working with Dr. Sharkey as a graduate student on the regulation of the MEP pathway.

 Aparajita Banerjee

Chris Harvey
harveyc7@msu.edu
Chris Harvey joined the BMB Graduate Program in Fall 2009 after receiving his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin- Madison the previous spring. Chris began working in the Sharkey lab in September 2009 as a rotation student. He is currently attempting to identify novel long-term regulators of isoprene emission rate by analyzing and comparing gene expression of differentially isoprene-treated A. thaliana plants under both high and low heat conditions. As an aside to this project, he is also looking at the thermo-protective properties of exogenously supplied isoprene on plant tissue under heat stress conditions.		 Chris Harvey

Zachary Jarou
jarouzac@msu.edu

Zach Jarou received his B.S. in Physiology with High Honor from Michigan State University in 2008. He is working on GLBRC sub-project 1.2 with post-doc Sean Weise. This project is focused on manipulation of the chloroplastic, transitory starch degradation pathway for biofuel production. To overcome the yield penalty observed in constitutive knock-out lines, the initial two genes of the pathway, glucan-water dikinase and phosphoglucan phosphatase, will be silenced by RNAi prior to harvest under the control of ethanol-inducible and senescence-activated promoters. Zach has been responsible for the generation, selection and characterization of these Arabidopsis lines, which have already demonstrated early proof-of-concept. Additionally, as part of his interest in plant growth analysis, Zach was awarded 2nd prize for his entry into the 2009 ChloroFilms Plant Biology YouTube Video Competition for a tutorial on Measuring Leaf Area with Adobe Photoshop CS3. He has also compiled a Time-Lapse Characterization of Arabidopsis Starch Metabolism Mutants. Zach will be attending medical school in the near future.
Zach Jarou


Ziru (James) Li
liziru@msu.edu

James Li joined the MSU BMB Graduate Program when the Sharkey lab moved from Wisconsin in spring 2008. He is originally from Shandong, China and obtained his B.Sc. in biology from the University of Toronto. James is currently investigating the effect of heat stress on thylakoid membrane structures as well as enzyme regulation in MEP pathway.
James Li
   

Undergraduate Researchers


 

Steve Breneman
brenema3@msu.edu

Steve Breneman has worked in the Sharkey lab for a little less than a year. He works as an undergraduate researcher mainly assisting Dennis Gray with gene expression of methyl butanol synthase (MBO). Steve is also involved in an independent study which focuses on gene expression of isoprene synthase (ISPS) in different plant species. Currently a junior majoring in physiology, he plans on attending medical school in the near future.

 Steve Breneman