Gary ZeRuth is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Murray State University, located in Western Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Department of Cell Biology, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Dr. ZeRuth later served as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Cell Biology Group within the Immunity, Inflammation, and Disease Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Working under Dr. Richard Pollenz, Dr. ZeRuth became interested in transcriptional regulation while he was investigating arylhydrocarbon receptor (AHR)-mediated regulation of xenobiotic response genes. He continued studying transcription factors as a postdoctoral fellow at the NIEHS under Dr. Anton Jetten where he characterized a novel family of Gli-similar (Glis) transcription factors that have roles in normal development and have been implicated in the progression of diseases including diabetes, hypothyroidism, and polycystic kidney disease.
Dr. ZeRuth established his lab at Murray State University in 2014 where he continues to investigate the roles of transcription factors in development and disease using the zebrafish as a model organism. The ZeRuth lab is chiefly concerned with understanding the transcription factor networks that govern the specification of the kidney and pancreas and elucidating how dysfunction of these processes lead to disease.
