Thomas Spratt, PhD

Thomas Spratt studies how DNA is damaged, how cells repair that damage, and how the failures of repair become permanent mutations. For most of his career the damaging agents of interest have been tobacco carcinogens; more recently the lab has extended that work to electronic cigarettes, where the chemistry is novel, exposures are widespread, and the biological consequences are still largely unwritten.

The Spratt lab takes a chemical biology approach. We design and synthesize molecules that are not available off the shelf and use them as probes to ask mechanistic questions that cannot be asked any other way — in purified systems and in cells. A single project may run from organic synthesis through enzyme kinetics, cell biology, mass spectrometry, and genomic sequencing. Students in the lab learn to follow a question into whatever discipline it requires rather than to build a career around a single technique.

Dr. Spratt is a member of the Department of Molecular and Precision Medicine and Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics track and a member of the Cancer Biology track of the Biomedical Sciences PhD Program.