Sheila David

Sheila Sue David
Alma mater	St. Olaf College University of Minnesota
Scientific career
Institutions	University of California, Davis California Institute of Technology UC Santa Cruz University of Utah
Thesis	Spectroscopic studies of inhibitor binding to uteroferrin (1989)
Website	David Lab

Sheila Sue David is an American chemist who is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Her research uses chemical approaches to understand cellular mechanisms, including DNA repair. She focuses on the repair of damaged DNA bases, which is mediated by base excision repair. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Early life and education

David became interested in DNA as a child, when she explored the laws of Mendelian inheritance by breeding mice in fifth grade. She converted one of the rooms in her house into a science laboratory. She became interested in biochemistry during her undergraduate degree at St. Olaf College, where she discovered structure-function relationships. David moved to the University of Minnesota for graduate studies, where she investigated inhibitor binding to uteroferrin, completing her doctorate in 1990 under the supervision of Lawrence Que Jr. Next, David moved to California Institute of Technology as an National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow.

Research and career

David worked as an assistant and associate professor in Santa Cruz and Utah before joining the University of California, Davis in 2006. Her research uses the tools of chemical biology to explore the mechanistic details of DNA repair. DNA is damaged by reactive oxygen species (e.g. the hydroxyl radical), and biological organisms have evolved various strategies for regeneration and repair. In particular, she studies the proteins MUTYH and NEIL1, which help to catalyze the repair of damaged DNA as part of the base excision repair pathway. MUTYH is a glycosylase that identifies and cleaves mismatched nucleobases, which triggers DNA repair. David is interested in how MUTYH locates the appropriate damaged target amidst the naturally occurring healthy DNA, as this may have implications in cancer therapeutics and drug discovery.

Awards and honors

• American Chemical Society Fellow
• American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow
• Editor of DNA Repair
• Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society Education Award

Selected publications

• Nada Al-Tassan; Nikolas H Chmiel; Julie Maynard; et al. (30 January 2002). "Inherited variants of MYH associated with somatic G:C-->T:A mutations in colorectal tumors". Nature Genetics. 30 (2): 227–232. doi:10.1038/NG828. ISSN 1061-4036. PMID 11818965. Wikidata Q43871566.
• Sheila S. David; Valerie L. O’Shea; Sucharita Kundu (21 June 2007). "Base-excision repair of oxidative DNA damage". Nature. 447 (7147): 941–50. Bibcode:2007Natur.447..941D. doi:10.1038/NATURE05978. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 2896554. PMID 17581577. Wikidata Q29615373.
• Sheila S. David; Scott D Williams (1 May 1998). "Chemistry of Glycosylases and Endonucleases Involved in Base-Excision Repair". Chemical Reviews. 98 (3): 1221–1262. doi:10.1021/CR980321H. ISSN 0009-2665. PMID 11848931. Wikidata Q77646696.