Theodore Muth, Ph.D.
City University of New York
Theodore Muth, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the biology department. His lab's research studies the microbial communities of urban soils and green infrastructure. A fundamental question driving our research is how humans impact urban microbial communities, and in what ways does the intensity of human activity influence the composition of these bacterial communities? Importantly, he wonders how bacterial diversity is impacted, and how this influences the critical nutrient and geochemical cycles that soil and water bacterial communities are known to contribute to in less disturbed environments? With increasing urbanization at a global level, sustainable use and management of urban soils is needed in order to maximize the ecosystem services these soils are able to provide. He analyzes urban microbial communities using metagenomic approaches coupled with next generation DNA sequencing. The Muth lab also studies the infectious mechanism of the plant pathogen, Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
Muth graduated from Haverford College with a BS in Biology in 1993, where he worked with Dr. Lois Banta studying the type IV secretion system of A. tumefaceins. For his thesis work, Muth studied molecular mechanisms of protein sorting in epithelial and neuronal cells in the lab of Dr. Michael Caplan at Yale University in the cell biology department, graduating in 1998. Muth went on for postdoctoral training in microbiology, studying multidrug resistance transporters with Dr. Shimon Shuldiner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and returned to work with A. tumefaciens in the lab of Dr. Patricia Zambryski at UC Berkeley. He joined the faculty at City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2000.
Muth graduated from Haverford College with a BS in Biology in 1993, where he worked with Dr. Lois Banta studying the type IV secretion system of A. tumefaceins. For his thesis work, Muth studied molecular mechanisms of protein sorting in epithelial and neuronal cells in the lab of Dr. Michael Caplan at Yale University in the cell biology department, graduating in 1998. Muth went on for postdoctoral training in microbiology, studying multidrug resistance transporters with Dr. Shimon Shuldiner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and returned to work with A. tumefaciens in the lab of Dr. Patricia Zambryski at UC Berkeley. He joined the faculty at City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2000.