Michael Melesse Vergara

Bio

Michael Melesse Vergara is a technical professional in the Synthetic Biology group within the Biosciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He earned his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Reed College in 2008 and a Ph. D. in Biochemistry from Purdue University in 2015. His research applies various approaches employed to elucidate regulatory schema governing, mitosis, the final steps of the cell cycle in budding yeast (S. cerevisiae) and roundworm (C. elegans). He utilized biochemical, genetic and cell biological techniques in his work to gain insight into the regulation of two proteases, APC and Separase, as well as a phosphatase, Cdc14. He is currently working on a multidisciplinary projects on developing novel approaches to understand engineered CRISPR/Cas biosystems in bacteria, single-celled, and multicellular eukaryotic organisms. He also applies next generation sequencing technologies to characterize microbes. 

Publications