Sabeeha Merchant

Sabeeha Sabanali Merchant (born 1959) is a Professor of Plant Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the photosynthetic metabolism and metalloenzymes In 2010 Merchant led the team that sequenced the Chlamydomonas genome.[1][2] She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2012.

Sabeeha Merchant
Born
Sabeeha Sabanali Merchant

1959 (age 60–61)
Mumbai
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison (PhD)
AwardsGilbert Morgan Smith Medal (2006)
Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
ThesisThe Chlamydomonas reinhardi chloroplast coupling factor 1 : its purification, properties, and aspects of its synthesis in vivo (1983)
Websitewww.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/merchant

Early life and education

Merchant was born in Mumbai.[3] She was unsure what to specialise in, and took an aptitude test at the age of 12.[3] Merchant scored well in the science and the humanities, but was selected for the sciences as there were not enough girls in the class.[3] Merchant attended the J.B. Petit High School for Girls.[4] At the age of fifteen, Merchant started university at St. Xavier's College, where she was one of five women in a class of 300.[5] She relocated to the United States. She joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1978 and became interested in the chemistry of living cells whilst working under the supervision of Glenn Chambliss.[3][5] Merchant majored in molecular biology and earned her bachelor's degree in 1979. She joined the Enzyme Institute to work as Henry A. Lardy's secretary, but he encouraged her to apply for graduate programs. She eventually earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983.[6] She worked alongside Bruce Selman on the single-cell algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.[7] Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a model organism as it can build the relevant systems for photosynthesis in the absence of light. During her doctorate Merchant purified chloroplast coupling factor 1, a component of the pathway that uses ATP synthase to synthesize Adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

Research and career

After completing her PhD, Merchant joined Lawrence Bogorad at Harvard University.[8] She started working on light-regulated gene expression.[3] Unfortunately, four months into her postdoctoral research fellowship there was a fire in the laboratory.[3] During this time she began to read in the library, investigating role of metals in the regulation of photosynthetic electron transport in Chlamydomonas.[3] She studied how cells detect the levels of copper and developed antibodies.[3]

Merchant was the first to demonstrate that the RNA for Chlamydomonas reinhardtii plastocyanin is produced when copper is available.[3] She used pulse-chase analysis to show that whilst plastocyanin is continuously translated, it becomes degraded in systems without enough copper.[9] Merchant showed that the RNA of cytochrome c6, an iron-based protein, is only present in copper deficient cells.[10] She showed that chlamydomonas also contained cytochrome c6, which could step in during photosynthesis if needed.[3]

In 1987 Merchant moved to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[3] She works on metal nutrient deficiency, which requires water purification systems to generate water that is free of metal contaminants.[3] In her lab experiments are performed in rigorously cleaned glassware, using hydrochloric acid to remove surface metal ions.[3] Her early work considered signalling that responded to copper, but she has since expanded into iron sensing and the impact of iron deficiencies on photosynthesis. In an effort to understand copper sensing, she studied mutants that did not produce plastocyanin.[11] She discovered that the regulator for plastocyanin and cytochrome c regulation was CRR1 (Copper Response Regulator). She worked with Todd Yeates on the structure and genetics of plastocyanin and cytochrome c, uncovering the crystal structures of both proteins.[12][13] She was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal for her contributions to the assembly of metalloenzymes.[14] In 2007 she led a team that sequenced the Chlamydomonas genome.[15] Her inaugural article was published in PNAS in 2009.[16] She spent 2012 on a sabbatical at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology.[17] She was appointed Director of the Institute for Genomics and Proteomics at UCLA in 2014.[18]

Merchant moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 2018.[19] At Berkeley, she is a Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology.[20] Her lab continue to investigate the metabolism of iron and copper, as well as comparative genomics of algae and bioenergy.[20]

Merchant serves as the editor-in-chief of the journal Plantae and The Plant Cell.[21][22]

Awards and honors

Her awards and honors include;

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References
  1. Merchant, Sabeeha (1998). Molecular Biology of Chlamydomonas: Chloroplasts and Mitochondria. Advances in Photosynthesis. Springer. ISBN 978-0-7923-5174-0
  2. Sabeeha Merchant publications from Europe PubMed Central
  3. Davis, Tinsley H. (2015-03-03). "Profile of Sabeeha Merchant". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (9): 2633–2634. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.2633D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1500798112. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4352817. PMID 25675533.
  4. PTI (February 9, 2006). "Indian-American scientist honoured by US". indiatimes.com. The Times of India. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  5. "MGM 2007". www.chem.uzh.ch. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  6. Affairs, Public; November 26, UC Berkeley|; 2018 (2018-11-26). "Meet our new faculty: Sabeeha Merchant, biology". Berkeley News. Retrieved 2019-05-23.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. "Merchant publications from Ph.D. thesis research". www.chem.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  8. Merchant, Sabeeha. "Lawrence Bogorad 1921 - 2003: A Biographical Memoir" (PDF). NAS. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  9. "Studies on chloroplast development in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii IV. Control of rapid chlorophyll formation in greening y-1 cells". Plant and Cell Physiology. 1976. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.pcp.a075363. ISSN 1471-9053.
  10. Merchant, S; Bogorad, L (1986). "Regulation by copper of the expression of plastocyanin and cytochrome c552 in Chlamydomonas reinhardi". Molecular and Cellular Biology. 6 (2): 462–9. doi:10.1128/mcb.6.2.462. OCLC 679283371. PMC 367534. PMID 3023849.
  11. Merchant, S.; Bogorad, L. (1987). "Metal ion regulated gene expression: use of a plastocyanin-less mutant of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to study the Cu(II)-dependent expression of cytochrome c-552". The EMBO Journal. 6 (9): 2531–2535. doi:10.1002/j.1460-2075.1987.tb02540.x. ISSN 0261-4189. PMC 553670. PMID 2824187.
  12. Kerfeld, Cheryl A.; Anwar, Haroon P.; Interrante, Robert; Merchant, Sabeeha; Yeates, Todd O. (1995). "The Structure of Chloroplast Cytochromec6at 1.9 Å Resolution: Evidence for Functional Oligomerization". Journal of Molecular Biology. 250 (5): 627–647. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1995.0404. ISSN 0022-2836. PMID 7623381.
  13. Redinbo, Matthew R.; Cascio, Duilio; Choukair, Marie K.; Rice, Danny; Merchant, Sabeeha; Yeates, Todd O. (1993-10-12). "The 1.5-.ANG. crystal structure of plastocyanin from the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii". Biochemistry. 32 (40): 10560–10567. doi:10.1021/bi00091a005. ISSN 0006-2960. PMID 8399201.
  14. "Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  15. Grossman, Arthur R.; Rokhsar, Daniel S.; Grigoriev, Igor V.; Zhou, Kemin; Werner, Gregory; Szajkowski, Lukasz; Porter, Aaron; Poliakov, Alexander; Otillar, Bobby (2007-10-12). "The Chlamydomonas Genome Reveals the Evolution of Key Animal and Plant Functions". Science. 318 (5848): 245–250. Bibcode:2007Sci...318..245M. doi:10.1126/science.1143609. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 2875087. PMID 17932292.
  16. Merchant, S. S. (2009). "His protects heme as it crosses the membrane". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (25): 10069–10070. Bibcode:2009PNAS..10610069M. doi:10.1073/pnas.0905189106. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2700887. PMID 19541628.
  17. "Humboldt Research Award for Prof. Dr. Sabeeha Merchant". www.mpimp-golm.mpg.de. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  18. "Sabeeha Merchant appointed director, UCLA-Department of Energy Institute". UCLA. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  19. Affairs, Public; November 26, UC Berkeley|; 2018 (2018-11-26). "Meet our new faculty: Sabeeha Merchant, biology". Berkeley News. Retrieved 2019-05-23.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  20. "SMerchant | Department of Plant & Microbial Biology | UC Berkeley". plantandmicrobiology.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  21. Williams, Mary (2017-05-09). "Sabeeha Merchant, Editor-in-Chief". Plantae. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  22. Schroeder, Julian (2015-06-02). "President's Letter: Time to PhD—Time to Publish". Plant Science Today. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  23. "Charles Albert Shull Award". ASPB. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  24. "California prof gets National Science Award". Rediff. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  25. "Newsroom". UCLA. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  26. "Fellow of ASPB". ASPB. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  27. "Charles F. Kettering Award". ASPB. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  28. "Humboldt Research Award for Prof. Dr. Sabeeha Merchant". www.mpimp-golm.mpg.de. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  29. "Sabeeha Merchant". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  30. "Sabeeha Merchant receives 2012 Darbaker Prize in Phycology | UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry". www.chemistry.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  31. "Sabeeha Merchant elected to German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina | UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry". www.chemistry.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
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