- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Research.com just released its 2023 rankings, based on a researcher's D-index (Discipline H-index) metric, which includes only papers and citation values for an examined discipline. For chemistry, the organization singled out leading scientists with a D-index of at least 40 for academic publications.
Gee achieved a D-index of 56, 8,287 citations, and 202 publications.
“We already knew she's one of the nation's best chemists; we're so proud of her,” said Hammock, a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Her statistics are “better than most of the chemists in the UC Davis Department of Chemistry,” Hammock added.
“This is a pleasant surprise and I am honored,” Gee said. “But, it would not have been possible without Bruce's mentorship and all the hard work of the many graduate students and postdocs that have come through our lab. Their eagerness and creativity and the ready availability of both lab and campus wide collaborators, as well as the multidisciplinary nature of the lab let them bring many new ideas to fruition. So my deepest gratitude goes to all of them. I just tagged along for the ride!”
“In addition to her scientific leadership Shirley became the personal focus of the field with her personal encouragement and attachment for scientists internationally,” Hammock related. “She made Davis the place to come to get the latest in technology and made international introductions and fostered collaborations that continue to be productive today.”
The UC Davis toxicologist was among the first staff research associates at UC Davis to be given principal investigator status on grants. "On her own, she developed a computer-based chemical and equipment inventory system in the laboratory which could be used throughout the university," Hammock said.
Gee's work has been recognized repeatedly with achievement awards and publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her area of expertise is the development of "ELISA" (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays) for pesticides and other environmental pollutants and their metabolites. She has trained students from around the world.
Gee was a toxicologist at SRI International in Menlo Park for three years before joining the Hammock lab in 1985. In the Hammock lab, she managed a team of researchers for more than three decades that annually included some 40 scientists: graduate students, technicians, post graduates and visiting professors from all over the world. From 2007 to 2016, she served as the director of research and founding member/manager of Synthia LLC, Davis.
“I have long been interested in human and environmental exposure to toxicants and utilizing screening methods to evaluate the presence of the toxicant as well as the potential for effects,” Gee writes in her biosketch. “Immunoassays have been used clinically for more than 50 years to detect the presence of drugs, hormones and microorganisms for human medical diagnostics.”
Hammock, a pioneer in the field that applies immunoassay and biosensor technology to environmental toxicants, noted that “Shirley led a project that extended the technology to measurement of a variety of environmental toxicants including pesticides, industrial byproducts, bioterror agents and flame retardants. It also included the application of new concepts to improve the robustness, sensitivity and high throughput that is required for environmental analysis and for the analysis of low-level exposure to toxicants in humans and animals in large scale studies.”
Gee has collaborated with investigators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Uruguay, Mexico, and Sweden using the assays for dioxins. She participated in a farmworker exposure study on the herbicide paraquat in Costa Rica and a farmer/consumer study in Thailand on exposure to pyrethroid insecticides. She is also noted for exploring novel immunoassay technologies, such as the use of nanobodies and to transfer this technology to end users throughout the world.
Four-Fold Contributions
Her major contributions to science are four-fold:
1. Her dissertation work focused on the comparative metabolism of xenobiotics in vivo and in vitro. She worked with a variety of organisms including rats, mice, monkeys, insects, and marine invertebrates. This provided a foundation for later work on the development of novel primary hepatocyte cell cultures as high throughput screening methods to assess xenobiotic toxicity and to explore mechanism of toxicity. Her colorimetric assay for monitoring cytochrome P450 assays is the basis of assays used now to monitor these enzymes in projects ranging from drug metabolism to environmental health.
2. Working with Hammock who pioneered the development of immunoassays for pesticides, Gee developed the first immunoassays for pesticides found as ground and surface waters contaminants by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Some of these assays were transferred to their analytical laboratory where in the early 1980s they helped end fish kills and drinking water contamination from rice herbicides. Shortly thereafter she co-authored a user's manual on assay development and use as a cooperative project with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The basic assay development and validation continues today and has found application to many environmental contaminants and includes the development of commercially available test kits.
3. Her interest in metabolism led her back to extending assay development from parent compounds to their metabolites. “Metabolites excreted in urine are useful biomarkers of exposure and the immunoassays developed have been used in several exposure studies,” Gee explained. “The studies have provided guidance to help reduce pesticide exposure by examining pesticide exposure patterns based on urine tests, then relaying educational information to the population.”
4. Since 1975 the gold standard of antibody reagents has been monoclonal antibodies. Touted as a better defined and continuously available reagent for immunoassays, monoclonal antibodies have applications both in analytical chemistry, including such things as home pregnancy kits and therapeutics where many new drugs are monoclonal antibodies. However, they are limited because their size does not allow penetration of the cell membrane and ‘humanizing' them for therapeutics is difficult. At 1/10th the size, single domain antibodies derived from camelids (VHH) will penetrate cell membranes, are easy to clone, express and genetically modify. Leading a team of researchers Gee explored the utility of these novel antibodies for the detection environmental contaminants and other small molecules.
In 2011, Gee received the UC Davis Staff Assembly's Citation for Excellence, presented by the chancellor. “Shirley seeks ways to help the lab and the department be successful,” the nominators wrote. “She is extremely efficient and effective” and a “can-do person skilled at anticipating and solving problems in a friendly, courteous and timely manner.”