Dr. Joshua J. Smith

Details

Education

• PhD, 2002, degree in Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota-Medical School December
• BS, 1998, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, with degree’s in Agriculture triple majoring in Animal Science, Horse Science Emphasis, Biotechnology, and Biology and a minor in Chemistry

Teaching

• Introduction to biomedical sciences
• Pharmacology and recombinant DNA techniques
• Honors college section of Intro to biomedical sciences lecture and lab
• Pre-pharmacy society faculty advisor

Research and professional interests

Current Research

• Continues interest of DNA repair in the silent regions of the genome that are highly compact and uses two interesting and very useful model organisms to study these research questions: Baker's Yeast ,Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila, cousin of Paramecium. 
  • Yeast is a good biochemical and genetic tool used to understand protein interactions within the DNA repair pathway. 
  • Tetrahymena is a very unique model organism in that it has developed a separation of nuclear DNA into two nuclei, nuclear dimorphism.  The micronucleus is completely silent and highly condensed into a structure resembling heterochromatin and is the genetic heredity of the cell used during meiosis. 
• The macronucleus is the location of cellular transcription and is made of a mixture of more open DNA, euchromatin, and condensed heterochromatin  Due to this nuclear dimorphism, research in this organism focuses on the differences in the repair mechanism of the two nuclei and how specific chromatin modification aid in each repair process. 
  • Through the use of these two models his research will gain a better understanding of the role of protein modifications and epigenetics in the repair of DNA and when the ability to modify proteins is abnormal how this can affect the repair of the DNA leading to genomic instability and cancer.