Sheryl Tsai
Chemical Biology
Irvine
Most professors will say that they look at the “Rate My Professor” website with trepidation. It’s easy to get discouraged if a student complains that your grading isn’t fair, or you have dandruff or, even worse, that you’re boring.
Sheryl Tsai has no such fears. Her reviews are unanimous raves, and she has the teaching awards to prove it. “She’s hilarious,” writes one student. “She actually enjoys talking about biology with her students!” writes another.
An associate professor at UC Irvine, Tsai works in the hot new field of chemical biology, harnessing a compendium of scientific disciplines to the task of discovering new drugs. In 2006, she was named a Pew Scholar for her research on the genetic modification of polyketides, natural products of plants, fungi and bacteria that can form the basis for new treatments for HIV, diabetes and cancer.
Her research has gained international recognition, but she’s just as proud of the teaching awards she’s earned at UC Irvine, including the prestigious Golden Apple Award for Teaching in the Biological Sciences. She mentors five or six students each year through UC Irvine’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
The UC Berkeley-educated Tsai grew up in Taiwan. (Her first name, Shiou-Chuan, informally became Sheryl after she arrived in the U.S.) By the time she was in high school, cultural and political ferment was loosening the grip of the island’s leaders and, as a result, Tsai says that when she arrived in Berkeley, the famously liberal city felt like home — almost.
Photo by Steve Zylius, UC Irvine
Question:
Your undergraduate and master's degrees are from the University of Taiwan. Is university education different there?
Answer:
Most of the professors have Ph.D.s from the United States, so it was very Americanized. Taiwan is a very open country with a big influence from the United States. I grew up watching "The A-Team" every night.
Question:
Berkeley isn't exactly like the rest of America. Was it a shock?
Answer:
Not really. I think the reason I felt comfortable at Berkeley was the emphasis on social justice. That year, the city of Berkeley increased parking fees, and to show their opposition, people knocked the heads of the parking meters off and planted flowers in them. Everywhere in the city, you saw flowers planted in the beheaded parking meters.
That resonated well with the Taiwan I came from. In 1989, Taiwan had no electoral system. We went on the street, demanding that people directly elect their president and asking for a fair election system. In Taiwan we successfully changed the system. So that sense of social justice meshes well with what we have in the UC system.
Question:
You earned a Ph.D. and now you're studying, among other things, a fungus called aflatoxin. Most people in the U.S. associate aflatoxin with the recall of Peter Pan peanut butter. Is peanut butter more prone to aflatoxin growth or was that just a coincidence?
Answer:
Here in the United States, it’s probably the food stock for our farm animals that’s more susceptible. So it harms livestock more than humans.
Aflatoxin binds to DNA and destroys the protein that prevents cancer. It’s almost impossible to prevent fungi from growing on corn and other kinds of animal feed. No matter how hard we try, we will have some aflatoxin generated from the fungi. The research is trying to find out how the aflatoxin is generated. We’re looking at how to kill the machine that produces aflatoxin.
Question:
What's your approach?
Answer:
Nature makes both toxin and drug in almost exactly the same way. So whether we make a toxin that causes cancer or anti-cancer drugs, they are actually made in the same way. By understanding how aflatoxin is made, we are also trying to understand how nature generates other drugs.
Question:
The commercial potential is obvious. Is that why your research has gotten attention?
Answer:
I think it’s because we are in the genome era. We understand a lot about DNA sequencing. But how do we interpret this vast amount of information? I look at it from another angle. I know that DNA will eventually become proteins, and proteins have three-dimensional structures.
Question:
So you're doing the basic science and others find the applications?
Answer:
A lot of us learn all kinds of tricks. I am trained both as a chemist and a biologist, and I know a little bit about drug design as well. If I really want to delve into this, I have to work with a doctor. We have a lot of collaborations like that throughout UC.
Question:
Which diseases are you focusing on?
Answer:
One application is anti-cancer. The other is anti-tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death for people with AIDS. We're all working on therapeutics for resistant strains.
Question:
You are adept at explaining science, to students and non-scientists. Were you always interested in science?
Answer:
No. My mother very much wished me to become a pianist. She saw that potential in me. I just became very passionate about science as a high school student. Once my parents realized my interest lay in science, they supported me. Last time I went back to Taiwan, every news clip about me was clipped and framed.
Question:
In addition to an impressive number of teaching awards, many of the undergraduate students whom you mentor have won honors for their work. Your emphasis on undergraduate student mentoring seems unusual for such a high-level researcher.
Answer:
I think it’s a UC thing. I visited Berkeley and Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, and everyone is passionate about teaching. The size of introductory courses can be a challenge, but we find a way to connect. Some of my colleagues have Facebook accounts just for their general chemistry classes. One of my friends was laughing about it. He said, “They can’t defriend me because I’m teaching them!” I myself have live forums online, so any student can ask me questions.
Question:
How is it mentoring this generation of students?
Answer:
Very rewarding. This is the kind of job that has daily ups and downs. When it’s up, it’s glorious. Youngsters are great to interact with. The “Nature” paper that we published (in 2009), nobody will care about in 10 years. The students that we mentor? They will always remember it.