New Faculty

Dr. Jerry L. Hedrick recently joined the faculty of the Department of Animal Science as a Research Professor of Biochemistry, but he’s not new to the university. With some sabbatical breaks in England and Japan, he has been a UC Davis faculty member for 39 years. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin. He was chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC Davis from 1982 to 1984 and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies from 1998 to 2001, heavily involved in Academic Senate matters. He was on Graduate Council, the faculty committee that oversees all graduate education at UC Davis, for a total of 13 years and chair of the Council three times. He received the UC Davis Academic Senate’s first annual Distinguished Graduate Mentoring award in 2002.
Jerry’s academic interests in animal biology include teaching biochemistry, both laboratory and lecture courses, and a specialty course for graduate students in the biology of animal fertilization. His research in animal biochemistry focuses on the molecular mechanisms of the fertilization process, particularly the proteins and glycoproteins on egg and sperm surfaces. In Animal Science, he will continue to pursue his research interests in the fertilization process with studies on fish, frogs, mice and pigs. His research strategies include some trendy tactics of animal science including proteomics, functional genomics and creation of transgenic animals. His teaching activities will focus on graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. He is currently program director of a cross campus training grant from the National Institutes of Health (fertilization and early development) involving 11 faculty (3 in Animal Science), three graduate student trainees and two postdoctoral trainees. He is also program director of an NIH career development award for 12 postdoctoral scholars whose career goals are to be faculty at universities and colleges. He and his wife Karel, a former Animal Science staff member and Dairy Goat Teaching and Research Facility supervisor, are life members of the American Dairy Goat Association.

Dr. Kenji Murata recently came to the department as assistant research biochemist from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Kenji graduated with a B.S. in biology from Toho University in Chiba, Japan, before going to Sophia University in Tokyo for his Ph.D. He worked in a nursing school in Saitama, Japan, and as a research fellow at Sophia University, then came to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1996 and later to the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He arrived at UC Davis to work with Dr. Hedrick in 1999.
Kenji is interested in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of sperm-egg interaction during the fertilization process, especially the egg envelope glycoproteins surrounding the oocyte called the zona pellucida (chorion in the fish), and the enzymes modifying its structure and functions as well as egg lectins in the egg cortical granules of the fish. His long-term goal is to determine the maternal genes and gene products involved in sperm-egg interactions during fertilization. His research is funded by the USDA.

Dr. LeAnn Lindsay also recently joined the department as an assistant research biochemist. A graduate of California State Polytechnic Institute at San Luis Obispo (B.S. in Biochemistry, 1983) with a year of undergraduate research at the Edwards Air Force Base Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, she earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at UC Davis in 1988 with Dr. Hedrick, studying sperm-egg interactions. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship and worked as a research biochemist with Wally Clark, former Animal Science professor, at the Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML), studying fertilization in shrimp. She then did a postdoc at UC San Francisco at the Hormone Research Institute, studying Type I diabetes. In 1995, she returned to the UC Davis campus as assistant research biochemist in the Section of Molecular & Cellular Biology (MCB) at BML, returning to studying fertilization. Since 1997 she has been teaching the MCB biochemistry laboratory course.
LeAnn’s research focuses on the structure and function of the egg envelope, a glycoprotein coat that surrounds all animal eggs and plays crucial roles during fertilization and early development. She is also interested in egg and oviduct proteases that modify specific egg envelope components to regulate sperm interactions. Her research is funded by NSF and NIH.