Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award

Mary Teruel

Mary Teruel did her PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at Stanford University. While finishing her PhD, she was asked by a colleague if she could build a device that could use electric fields to introduce RNA and other macromolecules into adherent cells for subsequent use in live-cell biological imaging experiments. While building and testing this device, Mary became fascinated with biology and started to learn to culture, transfect, and image cells. She published her first biological paper in the Biophysical Journal describing her studies on how holes are transiently formed in adherent cells by electric fields. This micro-electroporation device was subsequently used in numerous peer-reviewed publications as a means to transfect adherent cells.

Mary went on to build and implement more custom instrumentation for basic biological research, including a total internal reflection microscope system that can image the dynamics of membrane-events simultaneously in thousands of single cells. At the same time, her research has been focused on understanding the dynamics of lipid second messengers such as PI(3,4,5)P₃ and diacylglycerol and their role in processes such as the uptake of glucose into fat and muscle cells and the secretion of histamine from mast cells. Mary is currently working as a Senior Research Scientist in the Deptartment of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University. The Biochemical Journal awarded Mary for her newest work: “Model Prediction and Live Imaging to Identify the PIP3-regulated Proteome from C. elegans to H. sapiens”.