Email
sshell@wpi.edu
Office
Life Sciences & Bioengineering Center 4016
Phone
+1 (508) 8315000 x5917
Affiliated Department or Office
Education
BA Smith College 2001
PhD University of California, San Diego 2008

I have a passion for understanding how living systems work, as well as for sharing my love of biology and research with the next generation of scientists and informed citizens.

The central goal of my lab is to understand the regulatory mechanisms that underlie mycobacterial stress tolerance. We combine genetics, genomics, transcriptomics and biochemistry to understand how mycobacteria respond to, and ultimately survive, stressful conditions.

Our guiding principles are curiosity, respect, and scientific rigor. Together we strive to push the boundaries of knowledge and advance our field by addressing basic research questions that hold the keys to advancements in human health and understanding of the natural world.

To treat many infectious diseases, including the global scourge of tuberculosis, doctors must do battle with a wily adversary, bacteria. Unfortunately for afflicted patients, bacteria have also acquired strategies for thwarting attacks from the immune system and the onslaught of antibiotic drugs. We need to know more about the strategies bacteria use to survive stresses. Biology and biotechnology professor, Scarlet Shell, is seeking to do just that by probing the molecular changes that underlie these mechanisms.

Scholarly Work

Hargreaves, V.V., Shell, S.S., Mazur, D.J., Hess, M.T., and Kolodner, R.D. 2010. Interaction between the MSH2 and MSH6 nucleotide-binding sites in the S. cerevisiae MSH2-MSH6 complex. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 285(12):9301-10.

Shell, S.S.*, Putnam, C.D.*, and Kolodner, R.D. 2007. The N-terminal region of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Msh6 is an unstructured tether to PCNA. Molecular Cell. 26(4): 565-578

Yang, G., Scherer, S.J., Shell, S.S., Yang., K., Kim, L., Lipkin, M., Kucherlapati, R., Kolodner, R.D., and Edelmann, W. 2004. Dominant effects of an Msh6 missense mutation on DNA repair and cancer susceptibility. Cancer Cell. 6(2): 139-50.

Professional Highlights & Honors
Board of Trustees Award for Outstanding Advising, 2019
WPI
Sigma Xi Award for Outstanding Research and Scholarship, 2020
WPI

News

SEE MORE NEWS ABOUT Scarlet Shell
Telegram.com
WPI Professor Receives $1.1 Million Grant for Bacteria Study

Scarlet Shell, assistant professor of biology and biotechnology, has received a $1.1 million CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for a five-year program to study the molecular mechanisms bacteria use to survive stressful conditions of starvation and lack of oxygen.