Mark Metzstein, Ph.D.

My current focus is on education and mentoring of graduate students in biological sciences and in the preclinical curriculum of the Medical School. In the department, I am the Director of Graduate Studies and run the department journal clubs and research in progress talks. These forums are a key part of the cross department efforts to mentor and train our students in critical reading and presentation skills. I also teach an advanced genetics paper reading class, focussing on functional genomic analysis. In the medical school, I co-direct the preclinical Metabolism and Reproduction course. This course covers a large range of physiology, including the gastrointestinal system, the endocrine system, cell and body metabolism, and human reproductive biology and medicine. In addition, I work as a group facilitator for other courses throughout the medical school curriculum.

Nelson JO, Moore KA, Chapin A, Hollien J, Metzstein MM. Degradation of Gadd45 mRNA by nonsense-mediated decay is essential for viability. Elife. 2016 Mar 8;5:e12876. doi: 10.7554/eLife.12876. PMID: 26952209; PMCID: PMC4848089.

Nikolova LS, Metzstein MM. Intracellular lumen formation in Drosophila proceeds via a novel subcellular compartment. Development. 2015 Nov 15;142(22):3964-73. doi: 10.1242/dev.127902. Epub 2015 Oct 1. PMID: 26428009; PMCID: PMC6517834.

Jones TA, Nikolova LS, Schjelderup A, Metzstein MM. Exocyst-mediated membrane trafficking is required for branch outgrowth in Drosophila tracheal terminal cells. Dev Biol. 2014 Jun 1;390(1):41-50. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2014.02.021. Epub 2014 Mar 4. PMID: 24607370; PMCID: PMC4041209.

Chapin A, Hu H, Rynearson SG, Hollien J, Yandell M, Metzstein MM. In vivo determination of direct targets of the nonsense-mediated decay pathway in Drosophila. G3 (Bethesda). 2014 Mar 20;4(3):485-96. doi: 10.1534/g3.113.009357. PMID: 24429422; PMCID: PMC3962487.

Frizzell KA, Rynearson SG, Metzstein MM. Drosophila mutants show NMD pathway activity is reduced, but not eliminated, in the absence of Smg6. RNA. 2012 Aug;18(8):1475-86. doi: 10.1261/rna.032821.112. Epub 2012 Jun 27. PMID: 22740637; PMCID: PMC3404369.