MikeMichael R. Sussman, PhD

Professor, Department of Biochemistry

Director, UW Biotechnology Center

Office and Laboratory:

Biotechnology Center Building,

425 Henry Mall, Madison, WI 53706

E-mail: msussman@wisc.edu

http://www.biochem.wisc.edu/sussman/

Curriculum Vitae (MS Word document)

Appointment Secretary: Chris Stricker, 608-262-8606; stricker@biotech.wisc.edu

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the past two decades, Prof. Sussman has become recognized as a leading expert in biological and genomic research. His research interests have focused on using the model higher plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, for understanding the role of plasma membrane proteins in signal transduction and solute transport. His laboratory was the first to report on unique protein kinases found only in plants and protists and on the plasma membrane proton pump, which provides the driving force for the uptake of all nutrients. To help understand the in situ role played by these important proteins, his laboratory pioneered the development of genome-wide reverse genetics techniques to isolate ‘knockout’ plants, starting with the sequence for any one of the ca. 30,000 genes in Arabidopsis (1). For example, his lab was the first to demonstrate that the plant homologue for a brain potassium channel is performing a nutritional role in higher plants, i.e. is responsible for the uptake of potassium from soil (2).

In the past decade, Dr. Sussman has focused on the development and application of innovative new genomic technologies. For example, together with Prof. Franco Cerrina in the Dept. of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Prof. Sussman is co-inventor of a new instrument known as a MAS (Maskless Array Synthesizer) that makes “gene chips” that analyze the structure and activity of hundreds of thousands of genes at once (3,4). The MAS is unique because it eliminates the requirement for expensive masks used in traditional DNA chip technology, thus making this elegant technology accessible to all scientists. This technology is the basis for a new rapidly expanding biotechnology company that Drs. Sussman and Cerrina founded in Madison, WI, called NimbleGen Systems, Inc. Sussman’s current interests involve the application of isotope-assisted tandem mass spectrometry for analysis of the proteome and metabolome, for determining the in situ roles of important hormones whose effects are initiated at the plasma membrane (5, 6).

Prof. Sussman’s awards have included a Fulbright research fellowship for a research sabbatical in Belgium, a McKnight Foundation award, a UW-Madison WARF Kellett Mid-Career Award, a Vilas Associates Award and recently, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996 Prof. Sussman was appointed Interim Director of the UW Biotechnology Center (UWBC) and in 1997, he was appointed as Director. The UWBC is a campus wide facility devoted to research, outreach and service in the area of biotechnology and genomic science and instrumentation. UWBC currently has an operating budget of ca. $8 million per year and ca. 100 employees. Dr. Sussman has worked closely with UW central administration, the Wisconsin legislature and Governors Thompson, McCallum and Doyle, to help the state develop a biotechnology-based economy. In 2001 he was appointed to the Wisconsin Technology Council and in 2005, to the Wisconsin Biofuels Consortium.

Selected Publications

  1. Krysan, P.J., Young, J.C., Tax, F. and Sussman, M.R. 1996. Identification of T-DNA insertions within Arabidopsis genes involved in signal transduction and ion transport. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 93:8145-8150
  2. Hirsch, R.E., Lewis, B.D., Spalding, E.S., and Sussman, M.R. 1998. Genetic evidence for a nutritional role for plant potassium channels. Science 280:918-921.
  3. Singh-Gasson, S., Green, R.D., Yue, Y., Nelson, C., Blattner, F., Sussman, M.R. and Cerrina, F. 1999. Maskless fabrication of light-directed oligonucleotide microarrays using a digital micromirror array. Nature Biotechnology 17:974-978.
  4. Stolc, V., Manoj Pratim Samanta, Waraporn Tongprasit, Himanshu Sethi, Shoudan Liang, David C. Nelson, Adrian Hegeman, Clark Nelson, David Rancour, Sebastian Bednarek, Eldon L. Ulrich, Qin Zhao, Russell L. Wrobel, Craig S. Newman, Brian G. Fox, George N. Phillips, Jr., John L. Markley, and Michael R. Sussman, 2005, “Identification of transcribed sequences in Arabidopsis thaliana by using high-resolution genome tiling arrays”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102: 4453-4458.
  5. Hegeman, A.D., Harms, A.C., Bunner, A.E., Harper, J.F. and Sussman, M.R. 2004 An isotope labeling strategy for quantifying the degree of phosphorylation at multiple sites in proteins. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry 15:647-653.
  6. Higuchi, M., Pischke, M. S., Mahonen, A. P., Miyawaki, K., Hashimoto, Y., Seki, M., Kobayashi, M., Shinozaki, K., Kato, T., Tabata, S., Helariutta, Y., Sussman, M. R., and Kakimoto, T. 2004. In planta functions of the Arabidopsis cytokinin receptor family. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 101:8821-8826.