biology

Gisela Storz

Gisela Storz is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Gisela Storz rather than just read about it. In short: Gisela Storz is a microbiologist at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is the Associate Scientific Director of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology of NICHD.

Key takeaways

Gisela Storz belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Gisela Storz to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Gisela Storz from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Gisela Storz is a microbiologist at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is the Associate Scientific Director of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology of NICHD. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Career Gisela "Gigi" Storz received a B.A. in biochemistry in 1984 from University of Colorado Boulder. She completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Bruce Ames in 1988, where she discovered that OxyR senses hydrogen peroxide stress in Escherichia coli oxidation response. She trained briefly as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute with Sankar Adhya in 1989 and at Harvard Medical School with Frederick M. Ausubel from 1989 to 1991. She joined the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH in 1991 and is currently head of the Section on Environmental Gene Regulation. As of 2026, she became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Microbiology.

Research Storz's research interests include the characterization of small non-coding RNA and small proteins of 50 amino acids or less. An early focus of her research was the study of redox-sensitive transcription factors and the bacterial and yeast responses to oxidative stress. She discovered that the activity of the Escherichia coli transcription factor OxyR, now a paradigm for other redox-sensitive proteins, is regulated by reversible disulfide bond formation and elucidated how disulfide bond formation controls the nuclear localization of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae transcription factor Yap1. As a result of her group's serendipitous detection of the OxyS RNA, one of the first small regulatory RNAs to be discovered, attention shifted to the genome-wide identification and characterization of small regulatory RNAs in the model organism Escherichia coli. Work on small RNAs in Dr. Storz's lab revealed that the RNA chaperone Hfq stimulates the pairing of the majority of the small RNAs with mRNA targets and that small RNAs are integral to most regulatory circuits in bacteria. While identifying these small RNAs, her lab discovered that some of these small RNAs encode small proteins that had previously been overlooked because they are not detected in many traditional biochemical assays and the corresponding genes are poorly annotated. Her research group demonstrated that one such small protein, AcrZ, binds to the multidrug efflux pump protein AcrB to affect its ability to export certain classes of antibiotics. The Storz lab currently seeks to identify and to characterize the function of other small proteins from Escherichia coli.

Awards and honors Elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2002. Received NIH Director’s Award in 2007 and 2014. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. Awarded Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2023.

Selected publications Hao, Y.; Updegrove, T. B.; Livingston, N. N.; Storz, Gisela (2016-08-19). "Protection against deleterious nitrogen compounds: role of σS-dependent small RNAs encoded adjacent to sdiA". Nucleic Acids Research. 44 (14): 6935–6948. doi:10.1093/nar/gkw404. ISSN 1362-4962. PMC 5001591. PMID 27166377. Dambach, M., Sandoval, M., Updegrove, T. B., Anantharaman, V., Aravind, L., Waters, L. S. and Storz, G.(2015) The ubiquitous yybP-ykoY riboswitch is a manganese-responsive regulatory element. Mol. Cell 57, 1099-1109. Guo, M. S., Updegrove, T. B., Gogol, E. B., Shabalina, S. A., Gross, C. A. and Storz, G. (2014) MicL, a new sE-dependent sRNA, combates envelope stress by repressing synthesis of Lpp, the major outer membrane lipoprotein. Genes Dev. 28, 1620-1634. Hobbs, E. C., Yin, X., Paul, B. J., Astarita, J. L. and Storz, G. (2012) A conserved small protein associates with the AcrB efflux pump and differentially affects antibiotic resistance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109, 16696-16701. Hemm, M. R., Paul, B. J., Schneider, T. D., Storz, G. and Rudd, K. E. (2008) Small membrane proteins found by comparative genomics and ribosome binding site models. Mol. Microbiol. 70, 1487-1501. Zhang, A., Wassarman, K. M., Rosenow, C., Tjaden, B. C., Storz, G., and Gottesman, S. (2003) Global analysis of small RNA and mRNA targets of Hfq. Mol. Microbiol. 50, 1111-1124. Wassarman, K. M. and Storz, G. (2000) 6S RNA regulates E. coli RNA polymerase activity. Cell 101, 613-623. Altuvia, S., Weinstein-Fischer, D., Zhang, A., Postow, L., and Storz, G. (1997) A small, stable RNA induced by oxidative stress: Role as a pleiotropic regulator and antimutator. Cell 90, 43-53. Zheng, M., Åslund, F., and Storz, G. (1998) Activation of the OxyR transcription factor by reversible disulfide bond formation. Science 279, 1718-1721. Storz, G., Tartaglia, L. A., and Ames, B. N. (1990) Transcriptional regulator of oxidative stress-inducible genes: Direct activation by oxidation. Science 248, 189-194.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Gisela Storz

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Gisela Storz claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Gisela Storz before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Gisela Storz ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Gisela Storz

In research: Gisela Storz appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Gisela Storz in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Gisela Storz is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American women scientists, 21st-century American women scientists, American microbiologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Gisela Storz outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Gisela Storz” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Gisela Storz in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Gisela Storz means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Gisela Storz out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gisela Storz in simple terms?

Why does Gisela Storz matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Gisela Storz?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Gisela Storz.