New Professor:
Megan McEvoy

Megan McEvoy's research interests are in the area of protein-protein interactions and how those interactions are regulated at the molecular level to accomplish physiological responses. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Oregon, Eugene, in 1997, where she was also a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Molecular Biology. Her B.A. was in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Go, Slugs!).

The particular biological system under investigation in Professor McEvoy's research is the protein complexes which result in asymmetric division of neuroblasts during Drosophila development. Her primary experimental approach is NMR spectroscopy, and she will also undertake x-ray crystallography and additional biochemical and biophysical techniques in order to dissect this protein assembly and understand the structural basis for its function. In the long term, she hopes to obtain a complete picture at the molecular level of the protein machinery specifying asymmetric localization of factors which determine cell fate in Drosophila neuroblasts, and to generalize these results in other systems involving homologous components.

Professor McEvoy is enjoying life in Tucson, as are her husband, Andy Hausrath, and their two-year old daughter, Isabel. Outside of the lab, she likes to spend her time doing woodworking and cooking. She happily noticed that as she has moved from University to University during her education and career, her school mascots are moving up the food chain (Banana Slugs -> Ducks -> Wildcats). Now she's at the top!

Retirement:
Richard Jensen

Professor Emeritus Richard Jensen may have left the Biological Sciences West building, but he still spends time reading science, catching up with the honey-do projects and volunteering in the Bishop's Storehouse.

Richard Jensen began teaching at the University of Arizona in 1967 in the Department of Chemistry, the same year as the formation of the Department of Biochemistry in the College of Medicine. Having received his Ph.D. from Brigham Young University in 1965, and fresh from a post-doc at Berkeley with Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin, Jensen joined a young cadre of researchers that included Professors John Rupley, Gordon Tollin and George Adams (husband of Pat Adams). Professor Michael Wells also started that year in the medical Biochemistry Department.

Jensen's research has been in the area of photosynthesis, beginning with his work at Berkeley, where they were the first to isolate intact chloroplasts capable of the complete process of light-dependent carbon fixation. The process of photosynthesis involving the capture of light, evolution of O2 and the fixation of CO2 occurs in the chloroplasts of higher plants. Carbon is assimilated initially into the plant by fixation of CO2 into carbohydrates by ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase, called initially Rubisco by Don Bourque. This enzyme, although in high protein amounts in the chloroplasts of the leaf, is regulated and limits the rate of photosynthesis. Jensen studied regulation of these and other metabolic processes utilizing intact chloroplasts, separated leaf mesophyll cells and protoplasts, as well as intact plants. In 1981 he noted that light intensity limited photosynthetic CO2 uptake in intact plants by controlling the activation of Rubisco in vivo (PNAS 78:2985-2989 (1981). This result was recently re-discovered by others as reported in PNAS of December 2000 with a commentary by Jensen (PNAS 97:12937(2000).

Jensen "retired" in 1997, moving with his wife to Wesel and Paderborn in Germany for 18 months on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Upon his return from Germany, Jensen continued his work in close collaboration with Professor Hans Bohnert, in the area of plant stress. As he described it, "Our labs were together, our funding was together." With Bohnert's recent departure with his laboratory to the University of Illinois, Jensen decided to retire from the University in deed as well as in word.

He will not be idle. He continues to do church work, volunteering as a clerk ("that means I can run a computer") for the Bishop's Storehouse, a food warehouse for church members in need. The center used to do its own canning, but is now limited to dry-pack goods. The Church also supports an employment agency there. Professor Jensen's interest in biochemistry and plant science continues but with less vigor. He would like to continue being involved part-time as a plant biochemist/physiologist. "Science was a great experience for me", he enthused. "We had some really fun times."