Darrin T. Schultz

About

Scientist and naturalist. I explore the world to understand the origin of animals and unique life on Earth.
Born in the US in the Midwest, undergraduate at Oberlin College, Fulbright fellow in Japan.
Completed my PhD at UC Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
Postdoc at the University of Vienna and then Stanford.
I am currently a postdoc at Stanford University and will teach and do research as a Lehigh University professor.
I am a hobbyist scuba diver, photographer, and learn languages for fun and cultural exchange.

I am a researcher bridging chromosome-scale genomics, evolutionary biology, and molecular technology development.
You can find my list of publications here: Google Scholar
Our work has included tracing chromosomal changes to detangle early events in animal history and understand the deep branch points in the animal tree: Nature 2023
Characterizing how animal chromosomes changed over their 1-billion year history: bioRxiv 2024
Uncovering the unique chromosome biology of the Pacific sea gooseberry comb jellyfish: G3 2021

I have sequenced or assembled the first chromosome-scale genomes of ctenophores (H. californensis and B. microptera) and of close relatives of animals, and chromosome-scale genomes of sponges (a carnivorous sponge and a bioluminescent sponge, a glass sponge), a cnidarian (Nanomia septata, with coauthors), an octopus (Octopus vulgaris, with coauthors), leeches, symbiotic tubeworm bacteria, a fish (Dascyllus trimaculatus), and a copepod (Acartia tonsa).

Our work also looks at the evolution and function of bioluminescence. We identified the world's first bioluminescent sponge and how it glows (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.576476/full), and a novel bioluminescence system of a marine polychaete worm (Odontosyllis undecimdonta https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X1831204X).