UCSC faculty members involved in stem cell research span five departments in the Baskin School of Engineering and the Divisions of Physical & Biological Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Their research utilize a myriad of approaches, including studies in key model organisms (ie. mouse, fruit fly, worm); genetics and molecular biology; computational approaches for understanding gene regulatory networks, expression patterns, and alternative splicing; bioinformatics approaches integrating and displaying large-scale data sets collected from stem cell research; and examination of the social and ethical issues surrounding stem cell research.
Individual projects focus on a number of biological systems, including germ line and nervous system development, epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation, blood cell differentiation, mammalian embryonic cell fates, wound healing, and the immune system.
If you are interested in pursuing a position in one of these labs as a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) or Postdoctoral Scholar, please reach out to the PI directly through their respective lab website as provided below.
Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
Manny Ares
Studying post-transcriptional control of gene expression in a variety of cell types, in particular systems-level regulation mediated by sequestration and competition phenomena.
David Boyd
The Boyd lab studies the host factors that determine disease severity following respiratory viral infection. The lab focuses on the role of lung stromal cells, which make up the connective tissue and provide structural support, in orchestrating immune responses to infection in the respiratory tract. Current projects aim to identify the progenitor cells that give rise to distinct stromal activation states which exhibit diverse inflammatory and tissue remodeling functions. Defining these differentiation pathways may uncover new therapeutic targets to prevent or reverse severe respiratory viral disease.
Susan Carpenter
The Carpenter lab focuses on understanding the complex molecular mechanisms that drive inflammation in the body. Recent evidence shows that a group of RNA molecules known as long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) plays important roles in diverse biological functions, including the inflammatory response. There are 16,000 lncRNAs identified in the human genome and the Carpenter lab is interested to discover functionally conserved genes that are critical for controlling macrophage development from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and downstream inflammatory functions. They employ a host of approaches to tackle these questions and to understand lncRNA’s mechanism of action: RNA-seq, high throughput CRISPR-based screening, and they have generated mouse models for in vivo interrogation of function.
Bin Chen
The Chen lab studies development of the cerebral cortex in the mammalian brain focusing on three related questions. 1) What is the lineage relationship between cortical neural stem cells and different types of cortical excitatory neurons and glial cell types? 2) What mechanisms regulate the lineage progression of neural stem cells? 3) What molecular mechanisms direct the specification of different subtypes of cortical excitatory neurons from multipoint neural stem cells? Dr. Chen uses a combination of approaches, including mouse genetics, neural anatomy, ChIP-seq and genomics, and electrophysiology.
Bradley Colquitt
The Colquitt Lab studies the development and evolution of sensorimotor behaviors, using birdsong and its neural circuitry as a model system. The lab seeks to understand the cellular basis of behavioral evolution by characterizing the developmental relationships — from neural stem cells to mature neurons — of neurons dedicated to ancestral and derived behaviors. In addition, songbirds have extensive adult neurogenesis in birdsong control areas, and the lab is working to understand the factors that maintain stem cell neurogenic potential in songbirds. The lab uses a combination of single-cell molecular assays (RNA and ATAC-seq), gene manipulations, microscopy, and large-scale behavior analysis.
Valerie Cortez
The Cortez Lab studies intestinal epithelial biology in the context of viral infection. Current projects utilize enteric viruses to probe the functions of goblet cells, specialized epithelial cells that produce mucus and are derived from secretory progenitors that emerge from the stem cell niche at the base of intestinal crypts. We are focused on defining the processes that regulate goblet cell migration, differentiation, and maturation. Disruption in the homeostatic functions of goblet cells has been associated with intestinal barrier defects, the development of inflammatory bowel disease, as well as altered susceptibility to enteric pathogens.
David Feldheim
Dr. Feldheim researches how retinal ganglion cells (RGC), the neurons that project information from the eye to the brain, develop during embryogenesis and are maintained in adulthood. He uses a combination of mouse molecular genetics, anatomical tracing, and neural activity recordings to determine the genes that are required for RGC health and function. His research provides insights into mechanisms that determine how visual circuits develop, as well as the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, such as glaucoma, in which RGCs die.
Carol Greider
Stem cell function is essential for tissue homeostasis and renewal and their loss may explain the multi-system failure that occurs in aging. Preliminary analysis of a mouse model that lacks telomerase RNA and has short telomeres indicates that telomere shortening leads to loss of stem cells, and organ failure. The Greider lab is currently using mammalian tissue culture cells to study the fundamental mechanisms of telomere length maintenance and consequence of short telomeres to understand stem cell failure.
Lindsay Hinck
Dr. Hinck uses the breast as a model system to study how extracellular factors and the niche regulate the balance between stem/progenitor cell expansion, renewal and differentiation. Recently, her lab has focused on determining how alveolar progenitor cells generate the millions of differentiated cells required for every pregnancy and estrus cycle. Elucidating the pathways governing these events is of great interest. This research addresses the public health concern of lactation insufficiency—a significant challenge for women’s and children’s health worldwide. Hinck’s studies are defining a targetable pathway to enhance milk production.
Euiseok Kim
The Kim lab focuses on understanding the organizational logic of long-range neural circuits and the molecular mechanisms of their development using the mouse cortex as a model. A major research goal of Dr. Kim is to answer how a population of neural progenitors/stem cells in a single cortical area develops into diverse subtypes each projecting to particular brain areas and receiving specific brain-wide inputs. His lab is examining how genetic programs and neuronal activity interact to construct connectivity.
Matthew Romero
The Romero Lab is interested in understanding how exercise signals are transmitted to chromatin and how this epigenetic signaling regulates the genes that are both expressed and/or repressed after exercise in both skeletal muscle tissue and muscle stem cells. In particular, the lab is investigating how chromatin folding, and epigenetic regulation facilitates adaptations to exercise in the presence and absence of disease using a combination of physiological and genomic approaches.
Shelbi Russell
The Russell Lab studies the impact of bacterial symbionts on stem cell biology and cellular differentiation. Our current focus is on intracellular Wolbachia bacterial symbionts, which are leveraged as insect and nematode biological control agents worldwide. We investigate how the wMel strain influences fruit fly germline stem cell maintenance and differentiation, enabling its rescue of host genetic fertility mutations. Other projects explore how Wolbachia induces host cell differentiation upon infection, thereby creating a nutritive niche for the bacteria. To explore these questions, we leverage approaches from cell and molecular biology, to microscopy, genomics, evolutionary inference, computational biology, and bioinformatics.
Sofie Salama
Dr. Salama’s work involves using pluripotent stem cells from a variety of primate species and high throughput sequencing methods to study how genome evolution affects human development and disease. Since 2004, she has collaborated closely with Professor David Haussler, Scientific Director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. They co-direct a Molecular Biology (Wet) Lab that was initially funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is located in the Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells.
Jeremy Sanford
Post-transcriptional gene regulation governs the fate and function of virtually every human gene product. Dr. Sanford’s goal is to determine the underlying molecular basis for RNA-targeted regulatory mechanisms. His laboratory uses stem cells as a model to discover the biological functions and mRNA targets of RNA binding proteins (RBPs). Sanford’s research program focuses on understanding how the processes of alternative pre-mRNA splicing and translational control contribute to the gene regulatory programs that drive stem cell differentiation.
Upasna Sharma
Dr. Sharma’s goal is to elucidate the mechanism of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance by examining how environmental conditions modulate specific epigenetic marks in germ cells and how those marks influence development of offspring. The possibility that environment can influence phenotypes in descendants has tremendous implications for basic biology and public health and policy. To elucidate the mechanism of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance, Dr. Sharma’s lab examines three key steps: 1) how epigenetic information signals are generated in gametes, 2) how those signals are influenced by environment, and 3) how those signals influence early embryonic gene expression and development. To address these questions, Dr. Sharma uses a unique and powerful combination of molecular, genetic, reproductive, and genomic approaches in the mouse.
Susan Strome
Dr. Strome’s goal is to understand how epigenetic information is transmitted across generations and during development, including its importance in the normal development of germ cells in the offspring. Epigenetic mechanisms enable gene expression and development to be regulated not only by DNA sequence, but also by how DNA is packaged into chromatin. In C. elegans, a set of histone-modifying enzymes enables the parental chromosomes inherited by embryos to transmit an epigenetic “memory of the germline” from parent germ cells to the primordial germ cells (PGCs) in offspring. Germ cells that do not inherit that memory die. Strome’s lab uses this as a powerful model system to study fundamental transgenerational epigenetic mechanisms.
Bill Sullivan
Dr. Sullivan studies the role of endocytic vesicle trafficking in regulating stem cell differentiation and self-renewal. His lab takes advantage of the well-studied neuroblast stem cell model of the Drosophila third instar larva. In addition to being amenable to sophisticated molecular genetic techniques, fixed and live fluorescent analysis can be performed readily in this system. Specifically, Sullivan focuses on the role of Rab11, a key component of the recycling endosome, and its effectors on stem cell self- renewal. Over-expression of Nuf, a conserved Rab11 effector, disrupts stem cell self-renewal. Future studies include investigating the mechanisms underlying endosome segregation in stem cell divisions and the role of endosomal components in mediating stem cell self renewal.
Shaheen Sikandar
The Sikandar lab leverages single cell transcriptomic data to elucidate functional heterogeneity in normal mammary stem and progenitor cells. Determining lineage hierarchies and differentiation pathways in mammary epithelial cells will allow for novel solutions to global health problems such as lactation insufficiency and poor nutrition in infants. A major focus of the lab is to determine molecular mechanisms regulating vesicle trafficking for exocytosis (e.g. milk secretion during lactation) and endocytosis (e.g. processing of hormonal receptors like estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and prolactin receptor (PRLR). The lab uses functional genomics, lineage tracing, organoid culture, CRISPR genome-editing, advanced 3-D imaging and live cell imaging to identify novel molecular pathways specific to sub-populations of mammary epithelial cells.
John Tamkun
Using a combination of genetic, biochemical, and molecular approaches to study chromatin-remodeling complexes, including their roles in transcriptional regulation, structural maintenance, post-translational modifications, and cell fate specification.
Olena Morozova Vaske
Individual genetic disorders, although rare, collectively comprise over 15,500 conditions affecting about 13 million Americans. Two categories, developmental disorders and pediatric cancers, often result in early mortality or lifelong impairment. The Vaske lab is developing novel genomic approaches, such as the analysis of germline RNA and long-read sequencing that are designed to identify novel molecular aberrations that could be linked to the pathogenesis of human developmental genetic disorders.
Zhu Wang
One of Dr. Wang’s main goals is to dissect the internal and extrinsic signaling pathways that regulate the stem cell plasticity of prostate basal cells. During prostate organogenesis, epithelial basal cells behave as stem cells to produce luminal cells and neuroendocrine cells. This capacity is preserved, but restricted, in the adult organ, and is only reactivated during prostate epithelium regeneration after luminal layer damage. To understand the stem cell plasticity of basal cells, Wang’s lab employs multiple approaches, including genetic lineage tracing, organoid culture, CRISPR genome-editing, and single cell RNA-seq to 1) investigate the signaling pathways that regulate basal-to-luminal differentiation, 2) characterize stromal niche cell types and markers, and 3) identify gene regulatory network within basal cells.
Martha Zúñiga
Understanding the role of epithelial cell differentiation in epidermal wound healing and in cutaneous immune responses. Characterizing the development and homeostatic maintenance of regulatory T cells.
Yi Zuo
Dr. Zuo’s lab studies glia-neuron interaction, structural and functional plasticity during development, learning, and pathologies. The lab is particularly interested in the neural circuit change in developmental psychiatric disorders.
Biomolecular Engineering
Camilla Forsberg
Dr. Forsberg’s mission is to determine how hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) achieve homeostasis in blood and immune systems throughout life. Using the mouse as a model, her lab investigates blood cell production and specification of hematopoietic cells in the very early embryo, during adulthood, and in aging. The Forsberg lab dedicates substantial effort towards understanding the epigenetic inheritance of properties in ontogeny and upon differentiation. Important goals are to determine how maternal immune challenges during pregnancy affect the development and function of fetal HSCs and their descendant blood and immune cells, and how exposure to immune insults during perinatal life affects life-long health and susceptibility to disorders later in life.
Ed Green
Dr. Green is the co-director of the UCSC Paleogenomics lab. The lab’s research focuses on a wide range of evolutionary and ecological questions, mostly involving the application of genomics techniques to better understand how species and populations evolve through time. Dr. Green’s stem-cell related research addresses the genetic underpinnings of human-specific brain evolution and cognition of the human brain. The lab uses genomic methods to insert archaic versions of genes from extinct relatives (Neanderthals and Denisovans) into human-derived cells which will be grown into organoids. In the organoids, the biology of cells that carry genetic variants that have been extinct for thousands of years can be studied to help discover recently evolved functions in human brain development and cognition.
David Haussler
The Haussler-Salama lab was founded in 2004 with funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to explore the function of newly evolved and highly conserved human genome sequences as revealed by comparative genomics analysis. Current research uses human and ape pluripotent stem cells to explore how retrotransposons yield new gene regulatory networks, how recent segmental duplications contribute to human specific features of the brain and susceptibility to neurodevelopmental disorders and how to build better brain organoid models to study brain function, neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, and brain cancers.
Daniel Kim
Dr. Kim focuses on determining the molecular mechanism by which RAS signaling regulates the noncoding transcriptome during human embryonic development. Dr. Kim use genomic, single cell, and genome engineering approaches to decode the functions of RAS-regulated noncoding RNAs in human pluripotent stem cells. His lab also investigates the potential roles of RAS-regulated noncoding RNAs that are released in extracellular vesicles in the pluripotent state. Deepening our understanding of how this fundamental signaling pathway regulates the noncoding transcriptome will provide novel insights into pluripotent stem cell biology.
Tal Sharf
Understanding the human neurodevelopmental process promises to answer some of the most fundamental questions of our time: how do a handful of cells transform into the mysterious and complex matter that is the human brain, and how do external sensory inputs shape that trajectory? To address these questions, the Sharf Lab combines 3D human stem-cell brain models with high-resolution neuro-electronics and optogenetic tools to map and interact with neuronal circuitry. This system enables monitoring neuronal signaling at the single-cell level across large multi-cellular networks, thus providing heuristic opportunities to uncover how human neuronal circuits wire during neurodevelopment and how those circuits are disrupted in the context of neurodevelopmental disorders and disease. The Sharf Lab is a part of the vibrant and interdisciplinary Braingeneers consortium.
Ali Shariati
How stem cells decide to choose between two conflicting fates, division vs. differentiation, is an unsolved mystery of stem cell biology. The overarching goal of the Shariati lab is to determine the mechanisms that link cell division to cellular differentiation in stem cells. The lab combines emerging genome-editing technologies with single cell imaging to determine regulatory principles of cell fate decisions in pluripotent stem cells.
Josh Stuart
The Stuart lab uses data-driven approaches to identify and characterize genetic networks, investigate how they have evolved, and then use them to simulate and predict cellular behavior. The lab’s approach is to design computational models and algorithms that integrate high-throughput molecular biology datasets (genomic, epigenomic, and functional genomic) to predict cellular- and organism-level phenotypes. Dr. Stuart’s group created the metadata standards by which all data in UCSC Stem Cell Hub (SCHub) was annotated. The standard defined the minimal information about a stem cell experiment (MISCE) and has been used for the length of the project to create coherent descriptions across labs. The Computational Genomics Laboratory assists in core informatics processing of data and in downstream analysis of gene expression and epigenomics to identify cell states and transitions.
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Carrie Partch
Dr. Partch is interested in the intersection between circadian rhythms and cancer stem cell growth. Glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) depend on the circadian pioneer transcription factor CLOCK:BMAL1 for their continued growth and self-renewal. Recent work has shown that chemical biology approaches resulting in inhibition of CLOCK:BMAL1 potently disrupt GSC growth and improve survival in animal models of glioblastoma. Partch’s lab has studied the structure and function of CLOCK:BMAL1 for the last decade, identifying several classes of molecules that directly regulate its activity. They are beginning to use these inhibitors to develop new therapeutic approaches to treat glioblastoma.
Seth Rubin
Dr. Rubin is determining and targeting molecular mechanisms controlling stem cell and cancer cell division. His lab studies the structure and function of transcription factor complexes and their regulators that modulate cell-cycle dependent gene expression. They answer how these complexes are assembled, how they are regulated, and how their structural properties mediate their function. Projects include investigating critical oncogenes and tumor suppressors, such as Rb, E2F, Myb, and FoxM1, which play critical roles in stem cell division and renewal. Hypotheses for function and regulation are generated through structural biology approaches and tested with genetic manipulation and analysis of human embryonic stem cells.
Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
Raquel Chamorro-Garcia
The Chamorro-Garcia lab is interested in better understanding mechanisms of genome-environment interactions. Environmental factors such as pollutants, diets, temperature or stress, can contribute to disease not only in individuals directly exposed to the stressor but also in their unexposed descendants. Their work integrates epigenomic, transcriptomic, and physiological analyses to reveal how environmental stressors lead to the modulation of the expression of the genome. The lab’s current emphasis is on alterations of chromatin organization during early embryonic development, and on how this disruption is propagated through development and across generations contributing to phenotypic variation and disease.
Genomics Institute
Maximilian Haeussler
Dr. Haeussler is a research scientist and software engineer who works on the visualization of genomic data to make genomics data more accessible to lab researchers. He is the Co-PI of the UCSC Genome Browser, wrote the CRISPOR target predictor and the UCSC Cell Browser and is a member of the SSpygene project, which characterizes genes related to psychiatric diseases.
Mohammed A. Mostajo-Radji
Dr. Mostajo-Radji is the Director of the Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab. He uses brain organoid models to understand neuronal specification and fate plasticity across evolution. He is part of the Braingeneers group where he collaborates closely with engineers and computer scientists to generate tools to study neuronal identity. His group also leads education activities using cloud-enabled technologies to democratize the access to stem cell models in underserved communities throughout California and the world. He is also part of the SSPsyGene consortium, a NIH initiative to systematically characterize the most important genetic mutations in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Applied Mathematics
Marcella Gomez
Cellular response can be controlled through regulation of extracellular signaling. The Gomez lab focuses on the development of applied mathematical tools to automate mapping from extracellular signaling to desired cellular behavior. Recently, the Gomez lab and collaborators demonstrated control over the resting potential of human‐induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), which affects cell physiology and functions such as proliferation, differentiation, migration, apoptosis, cell–cell communication and large‐scale morphogenesis. The resting potential was regulated by dynamic changes in pH and tracked using ArcLight, a fluorescent reporter for membrane voltage that was expressed on the cell membrane. This was achieved by automated delivery of protons to the extracellular environment by a bioelectronic device via a model-free machine learning-based algorithm. The Gomez lab is also broadly interested in uncovering the underlying mechanisms that result in robust stem cell differentiation and leveraging them to control stem cell patterning.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Marco Rolandi
From the simplest unicellular organisms to complex beings, feedback control based on sensing and actuation is a staple of self‐regulation in biological processes and is a key to life itself. The Rolandi group focuses on developing bioelectronic devices to sense and actuate biological processes, such as wound healing and cell fate determination, using closed loop control. This strategy is based on sensors that collect data from cells/wound, an artificial intelligence (AI) system-developed by collaborator Prof. Gomez- that assesses the state of the cells/wound and creates a personalized on-demand recipe to control the process of interest, and actuators that deliver ions and small molecules in real time and specific locations to implement the recipe.
Mircea Teodorescu
Dr. Teodorescu is part of three large research projects: Braingeneers, Bioelectronics, and DANSER lab. His stem-cell related work is with the Braingeneers group which employs comparative genomics and primate brain development to model neural activity. The Braingeneers lab is experimenting with cerebral organoids — three-dimensional structures that are formed by self-organization and differentiation of stem cells and function like the brain of a developing embryo.
History Department
Jennifer Derr
My research agenda engages the relationship between the histories of science and medicine and those of capitalism. A portion of this agenda relates to questions of bioethics and the social relations that undergird particular research agendas, such as those bound up with stem cell research. I am particularly well-suited to advise trainees on the implications of stem cell research for the Global South.
Science and Justice Research Center
Jennifer Reardon
My research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices. My training spans molecular biology, ecology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. I am also the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center, and oversee the Science and Justice Training Program, a nationally and internationally recognized training program that teaches graduate students in science and engineering how to respond to the places where questions of ethics and justice meet questions of science and knowledge. I am particularly well-suited to advice students on the governance of stem cell science.