Dr. Christopher Rensing, Assistant Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science, recently made a visit to the NSF REU UBRPers to talk about his research. Dr. Rensing went to undergraduate and graduate school for Microbiology at the Free University of Berlin primarily, and spent some time at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. He performed his post-doctorate work at Wayne State University in Detroit where he studied microbial handling of copper and zinc. He then applied to the University of Arizona, having no concept of the Southwest, and in fact, misspelling 'Tucson' on his application. He began work here in October 1999.

Since Dr. Rensing's arrival, he has published over 40 papers and helped write many textbook chapters. His most current paper, published in PNAS, is about arsenic methylation and its role in the organic arsenic cycle. The paper asks the question, why methylation takes place in bacteria; the answer, it serves as a sort of resistance mechanism.

Dr. Rensing is now doing an analysis on arsenic transformation related genes in fungi, which are known to methylate arsenic. In addition, his lab also works with several other metals including mercury, copper, cadmium, and zinc.

Jaime Campos, UBRPer in Dr. Martha Hunter's laboratory, Entomology