[The Svedberg seminar] – Tracking the chemical basis of toxicological responses: from genome-wide mapping of DNA modifications to quantitative chemical activity profiling of gut microbiome modulations
April 27, 2026 @ 15:15 – 16:15 CEST
Shana J. Sturla
Professor
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Bio
Shana J. Sturla is Full Professor of Toxicology at the ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.Professor Sturla was born in New York, USA and studied Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in Toxicology with Professor Stephen S. Hecht at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, where her research concerned tobacco carcinogenesis and cancer chemoprevention with dietary compounds.
In 2004, Shana became an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Her work there was recognized with an NIH Career Development Award and, as a Dominican American, she received an American Association for Cancer Research Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Award. In 2009, she joined the faculty of the ETH Zurich, as Associate Professor with tenure and in 2016 was promoted to Full Professor.
She leads the Laboratory of Toxicology at the ETH Zurich. The goal of her research is to promote chemical, food and drug safety by elucidating the chemical basis of mutagenesis and toxicity, and to promote innovative bioanalysis strategies for predicting chemical hazards on the basis of chemical structures and reactivity, molecular responses and in vitro testing. Key areas of research interest include the study of environmental toxicants related to human disease, DNA damage and mutagenesis, drug resistance in cancer therapy and biotransformation of xenobiotics by human gut microbiota.
She teaches various courses at the ETH including Introduction to Toxicology, Biological Chemistry (Nucleic Acids), Molecular Disease Mechanisms (Cancer Section), a Laboratory Course in Toxicology, and the Carcinogenesis module for the Swiss Masters of Advanced Study in Toxicology.
Shana is the President of the Swiss Society of Toxicology, Member of the Platform Chemistry of the Swiss Academies of Science, and Editor-In-Chief of Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Her website is www.toxicology.ethz.ch.
Tracking the chemical basis of toxicological responses:
from genome-wide mapping of DNA modifications to quantitative chemical activity profiling of gut microbiome modulations
Understanding how chemical exposures translate into biological outcomes requires a multi-scale approach that bridges molecular interactions with systemic shifts in homeostasis. The Laboratory of Toxicology at the ETH Zürich develops high resolution strategies for tracking chemically induced alterations in cells by examining two critical interfaces: the human genome and the gut microbiome. In this talk, I will introduce chemical biology strategies for the high-resolution mapping of discrete DNA modifications, including drug-induced alkylation, strand breakage, and base oxidation. Using tailored sequencing approaches such as click-code-seq, we demonstrate how the frequency and persistence of these lesions across the genome serve as diagnostic indicators of mutagenesis, biological aging, and disease susceptibility. Second, we use chemical activity profiling to quantify the functional biotransformation capacity of the gut microbiota. By measuring degradation rates of metabolic probes, and chemicals relevant to human exposures, we reveal how exposure to xenobiotics significantly modulates the function of gut microbiomes and vice versa. By examining chemical signatures in both the host genome and the microbiota, we can more precisely define the drivers of biological dysfunction as a basis to elucidate mechanisms of genome instability and host–microbiome interactions.
Host: Daniel Globisch daniel.globisch@scilifelab.uu.se
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