Michael T Marty, PhD
Michael Marty, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Arizona. Dr. Marty earned his B.A. in chemistry and mathematics at St. Olaf College in 2010, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Ph.D. in chemistry as a Springborn Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2013 followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford until joining the faculty in 2016. He has been awarded the ASMS Research Award, the Bisgrove Scholar Award, and the NIH MIRA award. His research applies lipoprotein nanodiscs with mass spectrometry to study membrane proteins, antimicrobial peptides, and their interactions with lipid bilayers.
Cancer Focus
Prof. Marty’s research centers on developing new technologies to study interactions at biological membranes, with a special focus on combining lipoprotein nanodiscs and native mass spectrometry. One aspect of his research focuses on characterizing membrane protein-protein and membrane protein-lipid interactions. Membrane proteins are important drug targets, and the Marty lab seeks to understand how lipids influence membrane proteins important in cancer. The second aspect of Prof. Marty’s research focuses on assembly of antimicrobial peptide complexes, which also show anticancer activity. By characterizing the biophysics of peptide interactions with and within lipid bilayers, they seek to shed light on the mechanisms of anticancer peptide toxicity and selectivity.