Students

Name: Daniël P Melters
Major Professor: Simon Chan
Department: Plant Biology (College of Biological Sciences)
Lab Phone: (530)754-9789 (SC)
Email: dpmelters@ucdavis.edu
Web Site:  See below and copy/paste
[Picture of Daniël P Melters]
Degrees
MS - Leiden University, the Netherlands - Biomedical Sciences - 2006
BS - Leiden University, the Netherlands - Biomedical Sciences - 2003

Research Interests
Despite the ease with which the centromere can be identified in cells in metaphase, centromeres pose a paradox; on the one hand they are essential for the propagation of intact genomes to its progeny, on the other hand they have rapidly evolving DNA sequences. Furthermore, the length of a centromere is highly divergent between species (eg. yeast centromere (125 bp) vs. Arabidopsis centromere (2-3 Mb)), and besides having highly plastic sequences, the centromere can also be monocentric (single distinct point on the chromosome where microtubules bind at the kinetochore) or holocentric (microtubules bind along the entire chromosome length). Most species studied thus far have high copy tandem repeats (HCTR) in their centromeric regions, which suggest that these HCTR are crucial for proper centromeric propagation. We'll try to identify how these HCTRs evolve in animals and plants by means of comparative genomics. Major Professors: Simon Chan (http://chan.openwetware.org) & Ian Korf (http://korflab.ucdavis.edu). I also joined the Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology (DEB) program (http://www.deb.ucdavis.edu).
 
Publications
Soundararajan R, Melters DP, Shih IC, Wang J, Pearce D. Epithelial sodium channel regulated by differential composition of a signaling complex. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2009 106(19):7804-7809

Soundararajan R, Wang J, Melters DP, Pearce D. Differential activities of glucocorticoid-induced leucine zipper protein isoforms. J Biol Chem. 2007 Dec 14;282(50):36303-13