Staff

• Prof. Susan A. Gerbi, Director of the Sciara Stock Center

Susan Gerbi is the George Eggleston Professor of Biochemistry at Brown University. She was the Founding Chair of Brown’s Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. She began research with the fungus fly, Sciara coprophila, for her senior honors thesis at Barnard College and brought this model system with her to Yale University where she conducted her Ph.D. thesis research in the lab of Joe Gall. She and her classmate Mary Lou Pardue together with Joe Gall used the gigantic polytene chromosomes of Sciara to develop the method of in situ hybridization to map genes on chromosomes. Currently her lab group at Brown is completing the sequence of the Sciara genome and transcriptome as well as methodology for transformation to provide a toolbox for study of the many unique biological features offered by Sciara. The Gerbi lab studies the repeated re-initiations of DNA replication within a single S phase that results in DNA amplification at the DNA puffs of Sciara polytene chromosomes. Shortly after her term as a member of the Council of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), Dr. Gerbi was elected as ASCB President (1993). Her various honors include election as a Fellow of AAAS (2008- ) and Recipient of Rhode Island Governor’s Award for Scientific Achievement.