Sabeeha Merchant

Sabeeha Merchant holds the Warren C. Eveland Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences and is a Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on trace metal metabolism and homeostasis in green algae like Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, leveraging genomics, proteomics, and elemental analysis. Key areas include metal economy dynamics, photosynthetic acclimation, and algal-bacterial symbiosis. She leads projects on comparative genomics to understand metabolic adaptations across green algae, with applications in biofuel production and environmental biology.

• Research Themes: Metal homeostasis, photosynthesis, algal genomics, extremophile adaptation
• Key Techniques: Transcriptomics, cryo-EM, multi-omics integration
• Collaborations: DOE-funded projects with Kris Niyogi, Trent Northen, and others

Her lab investigates how algae optimize metal use under stress, with recent work on manganese storage mechanisms and diurnal metabolic rhythms. Publications span molecular mechanisms of metal sensing to genome-scale studies of bioenergy-relevant algae like Chromochloris zofingiensis. Ongoing work explores symbiotic interactions between algae and bacteria, aiming to identify metabolite exchange patterns across daily cycles.