Faculty Profile

Degrees

PHD, Univ Calif Berkeley; BS, Univ Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Bio

LC-MS is a powerful technique for solving biochemical problems, both for separating the complex mixtures that are often encountered and for characterization of the primary structures of biopolymers. One such project involves the mechanism of sex determination by egg incubation temperature found in many reptiles. This project is designed to test the hypothesis that temperature-dependent sex determination in snapping turtles is caused by a direct temperature or pH effect on the kinetics of one or more of the enzymes involved in steroid metabolism. Specifically, we are looking at the kinetics of transformation of testosterone into either dihydrotestosterone or estradiol and estrone. LC-MS allows determination of these steroids in crude tissue extracts.