Zemer Gitai

Professor of Molecular Biology/ Director of Graduate Studies

Princeton University

None of Teacher Turtles would have been possible without Professor Gitai, who generously invited Mark Eastburn to apply for visiting scientist status at Princeton University in order to conduct all of the genetic sequencing. Professor Gitai’s main research focus is how cells build themselves, particularly their internal structure known as a “cytoskeleton.”

Kathrin Fröhlich

Department of Microbiology

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Teacher Turtles would also not have been possible without all of the support that Mark Eastburn received from Dr. Froehlich, who once worked as a postdoc in Professor Gitai’s lab. Dr. Froehlich first started using her expertise in microbiology to help Mark Eastburn study bacterial communities that were living inside the vegetarian spiders that he’s been researching in Central America, and then she used her knowledge of molecular biology to help Mark Eastburn isolate and amplify turtle DNA. Though Dr. Froehlich has moved back to Germany, we are very grateful for all of her help!