Zhaohua was a student in Peking
University Medical
School, Beijing, China
before she received her B.S. from SUNY Stony Brook and Ph.D. in Biochemistry
from UCLA. After being a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech where she began her
research in cell cycle regulation using Xenopusegg extracts, she moved to Beckman Research
Institute of the City of Hope,
where she explored the roles of protein kinases in both cell cycle control and
pre-mRNA splicing in fission yeast. She joined Claremont Colleges in 2000,
serving as Interim Director of Molecular Biology Program and Assistant
Professor in Biology Department at Pomona
College. A year later,
she became a faculty member in the Keck Science Center of Claremont Colleges. In
her laboratory, Zhaohua has developed biochemical and genetic approaches to
investigate the interplay between cell cycle and RNA processing, using fission
yeast as a model organism. Her lab also studies response pathways of
environmental stress factors at a genomic scale in the evolutionary context of
yeasts. Her research is supported by grants from the National Science
Foundation and W.M. Keck Foundation.
Zhaohua
has taught courses in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry,
including Cell Biology (with lab), Biochemistry, Physical Chemistry for Molecular
Biology majors, Cell Cycle, Diseases and Aging. She is enthusiastic about
integrating her research into her teaching, and involving undergraduates in laboratory discoveries.
