EDUCATION

Ph.D., Cell & Developmental Biology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2006)

B.A., Biology and Molecular Biology,
Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA (1999)

TEACHING SCHEDULE:

OFFICE HOURS:

My courses

• • BIOL 252 Fundamentals of Human Anatomy and Physiology (Fall & Spring)
  • BIOL 202 Introduction to Genetics and Molecular Biology (Fall)
  • BIOL 220 Molecular Genetics
  • BIOL 395H Undergraduate Research for Honors Students (Fall and Spring)
  • BIOL 445 Cancer Biology (Fall)

Fall 23 office hours

Advising

The zoom link for virtual advising: https://unc.zoom.us/j/91882377688.

Scheduled meetings are scheduled through advising.unc.edu

Scheduled meetings: Mondays 11-1.  Steele building G015D (in-person or zoom).

Drop-in office hours meetings: Wednesdays 2-4. Coker 213A (in-person or zoom).

Teaching
Office: Coker 213A.

The zoom link for virtual teaching office hours- https://unc.zoom.us/j/95570257547.

Mondays  2:00-4:00 (in-person or zoom).
Wednesdays 11:00-1:00 (in-person or zoom).

or by appointment through bishemer@email.unc.edu

Shemer CV

Dear students,

I am your Biology departmental faculty advisor.
My advisor position is complementary to general academic advising (those advisors who work in the Steele building).
I am here to assist you with questions regarding the Biology major. I’ll be happy to help you with course planning, understanding the requirements of the Biology major, career decisions (e.g. grad school or med school?), BS Vs. BA , and any other concerns you might have.
For additional information on Biology advising, please visit our Undergraduate Advising section.
I’d like to invite you to meet with me with any questions you might have about the biology major. In addition to my office hours (see above), you are more than welcome to contact me by email at bishemer@email.unc.edu
I’m looking forward to meeting you soon!

Most plant development occurs post-embryonically, and is tied closely to environmental signals.  We use techniques of genetics, molecular biology, microscopy, physiology, and biochemistry to study how environmental and endogenous signals regulate plant development.  For these studies we use the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which has numerous technical advantages that facilitate experimental progress.  We hope in the long run to reconstruct how endogenous developmental programs and exogenous signals cooperate to determine plant form and the partitioning of growth among different organs.

The hormone auxin regulates multiple developmental processes in plants, including embryo and meristem patterning, organ growth, and flower maturation.   Auxin induces gene expression through a family of transcription factors called ARFs (Auxin Response Factors), whose activity is regulated by Aux/IAA proteins.  Auxin switches ARF proteins between gene repressing and gene activating states by promoting Aux/IAA protein turnover.  We are currently studying how this regulatory system controls seedling growth, ovule development, and flower opening and fertilization.

Among genes regulated by auxin are some (including those encoding Aux/IAA proteins) that feed back negatively on auxin response; and others encoding proteins that affect intercellular auxin transport.  We are interested in how feedback controls affect the dynamics of auxin response, and in how regulated intercellular auxin movement coordinates growth and differentiation of different cells during development.

At a Glance

• Speciation and the evolution of premating isolation
• Sexual selection and the evolution of mate choice
• Learning and cultural evolution
• Evolution of behavior

Synopsis

I am interested in a broad range of topics from evolutionary genetics to behavioral ecology. I explore these topics through the techniques of theoretical biology. My main goal is to use mathematical models to integrate rigorous evolutionary theory with hypotheses explaining behavioral and ecological patterns and phenomena. I am excited to provide integrated approaches to these questions by combining mathematical with experimental, genetic, and comparative techniques through collaborations with students and colleagues.

A large portion of my current work explores mechanisms that drive speciation through the evolution of premating isolation. One of the primary adaptive hypotheses for this evolution is that it occurs through the process of reinforcement, where it is driven by selection against the production of unfit hybrids. I have been exploring reinforcement by trying to pinpoint the forces of selection and genetic associations that cause evolution of alleles for female preferences for conspecific males. A current focus in this area is how speciation processes are affected when mating preferences and/or mating cues are influenced by learning.

An additional area of interest is mate choice, with a particular focus on male mate choice. I have used several different approaches to explore the question of whether male mate choice would be expected to evolve during polygyny. Other projects on mate choice include the effects and evolution of learning on sexual selection.

For more information, please see my lab web page.

At a Glance

• Epigenetic control of genome structure and function
• Cell cycle-regulated gene expression
• Developmental genetics

Synopsis

Our research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate DNA replication and cell proliferation during animal development.  An orderly process of events called the cell cycle, which in its most familiar form consists of four phases (G1-S-G2-M) controls cell proliferation.  The genome is replicated during the “S” or synthesis phase and duplicated chromosomes are segregated to daughter cells during the “M” or mitotic phase when cell division occurs.  G1 and G2 are “gap” phases during cells regulate the entry into S phase and M phase, respectively.  We study gene expression events that control how cells make the decision to enter S phase and proliferate, or to exit the cell cycle and differentiate. Without such control there would be no coordination between cell proliferation and the development and function of the many different types of tissues that make up an organism.  In addition, the breakdown of cell cycle regulation is one of the events that contribute to the generation of cancer.

We study this problem using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, in part because the genes controlling cell proliferation in fruit flies have been highly conserved during evolution and function the same way as in other animals, including humans.  This allows us to exploit certain advantages that Drosophila has as a research tool, including the ease with which genetics (making and analyzing mutants) and cell biology (using microscopy to

observe cell proliferation) can be applied to the study of gene function in the context of a whole animal.  Some of the cell cycle regulatory pathways that we study become defective in virtually every human cancer.  Thus, one hope is that understanding how these pathways function in normal Drosophila development will give us clues to how they might malfunction in the deregulated growth typical of cancer.

Human congenital heart disease, the most common form of heart disease in childhood, occurs in about 1% of live births and up to 10% of stillbirths. Presently, the most effective therapy for cardiac diseases is heart transplantation. However, due to the shortage of organs, cost and inaccessibility of treatment for most affected individuals this remains a limited therapeutic option. Alternative treatment is the administration of drugs that improve myocardial contractility, though this treatment is only effective as a short term therapy, with the 5-year survival rate using current agents being less than 60%. An alternative therapeutic option is to treat patients with cardiac progenitor cell populations that could infiltrate and repair damaged heart tissue. Thus, the ability to isolate and propagate cell populations that can differentiate into cardiomyocytes in vivo offers the opportunity to treat a wide range of cardiac diseases. To this end, our lab is interested in understanding the relationship between cardiac progenitor proliferation and the onset of cardiac differentiation focusing on the endogenous roles of the transcription factors TBX5 and CST and the protein phosphatase SHP-2.

Cellular division, wound healing, chemotaxis, and neuronal outgrowth all rely on dynamic shape change and adaptability afforded via an ever-changing cellular scaffold termed the cytoskeleton. We examine two core components of the cytoskeleton: microtubules and actin filaments in concert with the molecules that regulate them and facilitate communication between them. We employ a combined approach of high resolution time-dependent imaging in parallel with atomic resolution protein crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to understand, at multiple scales, the molecular processes that control cytoskeletal dynamics. Of particular interest are the +TIP protein families that dynamically localize to growing microtubule plus ends where they regulate microtubule dynamics, communicate with the actin cytoskeleton, capture kinetochores, and engage the cell cortex under polarity-based cues. Investigations proceed through three key areas.

1. Structure: Tertiary and quaternary molecular architecture of cytoskeletal regulators attained using x-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy.
2. Cellular and Organismal Imaging: Time-dependent systems analysis via genetic, opto-genetic, and small molecule manipulation.
3. In Vitro Reconstitution: Microscopy-based physico-chemical analysis of cytoskeletal dynamics and convergent biological events (capture, signaling etc.) through titration of core components and regulators.

Interleaving these efforts, we aim to test, correlate, and bridge information gained from the organismal, cellular, sub-cellular and atomic levels. Of particular interest are the aberrant cytoskeletal molecular mechanisms at play in neuronal disorders and cancer biology.

Links

News and Notes of Interest

ResearchGate / Google Scholar

Publications / Talks and Seminars

Teaching

Participation / Recognitions

Students

Prospective students: Near retirement, I am no longer taking students but explore Biology and the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program (including Geography Department faculty affiliated with this Program) websites for ecologists who may help you!  Though retiring, I am always glad to give advice to prospective and current graduate students through email.

Research Interests

Peter White is a plant ecologist with interests in communities, floristics, biogeography, species richness, the distance decay of similarity and beta diversity, conservation biology, and disturbance and patch dynamics. In vegetation science he is interested in the composition and dynamics of plant communities, the relationship between vegetation and landscape, and role of disturbance, and the ecology of individual species in a dynamic setting. In conservation biology he is interested in the distribution and biology of rare species, the design and management of nature reserves, alien species invasions, and conservation ethics.

From 1986 to 2014, Peter White directed the University’s North Carolina Botanical Garden through a period of exciting changes and growth.  In this role, he and the staff have sought to redefine the scope of botanical gardens to focus on conservation, sustainability, and gardens as the healing interface with and gateway to nature.  The Garden became one of the first gardens to enact policies aimed at diminishing the risk of release of exotic pest organisms in 1998 and was presented with a Program Excellence Award in 2004 by the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta.  In 2009, the Garden opened the Education Center, a 29,000 sq ft facility that became the first LEED Platinum building on any of the 17 University of North Carolina campuses.

The Vision lab studies genome evolution and the architecture of complex traits, with a (non-exclusive) focus on the flowering plants. Among the questions we ask are:

• What is the genetic basis for ecologically important differences between species, and what evolutionary forces generate that variation?
• What mutational and evolutionary processes are responsible for the structural rearrangement of chromosomes among taxa?
• What effect do genome structural changes have on organismal phenotypes?

To address these questions, we use the tools of both molecular and computational biology, and are actively involved in the development of new computational methods.

My laboratory interests are in the broad area of molecular biology. Before the advent of molecular cloning we successfully isolated a pure gene from sea urchins (the ribosomal rRNA gene). We also purified to near homogeneity a gene for one of the sea urchin histones prior to cloning. A paper by Bob Simpson and myself was the first to demonstrate nucleosome phasing.

My major interest at present is the study of protein-protein interactions. At present, we are investigating interactions of the blood coagulation proteins in coagulation and in the control of the pathways of coagulation. Our approach is to use molecular modeling to suggest mutations and to do in vitro mutagenesis to express the proteins and characterize their interactions.

We recently purified the g-glutamyl carboxylase from bovine liver and have now cloned its cDNA. This opens a new avenue of research for us and others.