Team
The people in the lab
Cecilia Zurita Lopez, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry · Schmid College of Science & Technology · she/her/hers
Dr. Zurita Lopez earned her BS in Biochemistry at Cal State LA and her PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at UCLA, where she characterized PRMT7 as the first true Type III methyltransferase. She completed postdoctoral work at UCLA, Caltech and USC, then joined the faculty at Cal State LA, where she was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, before coming to Chapman in 2021. Her lab is undergraduate-centered: five to eight students run projects each year, and student co-authors appear on most of the lab’s recent papers.
She is the 2026 SACNAS Outstanding Research & Professional Mentor and a Co-PI on an NSF-funded project using virtual reality to close the equity gap in chemistry lab training.
Undergraduate researchers
Ian Alix
Gene-editing efficiency in cerebral organoids by next-generation sequencing
Berenice Gonzalez
BAG3 and arginine methylation in alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy
Maya Leonida
Histone arginine methylation on microfluidic devices
Kalli Lim
Effects of phosphorylation on methylated histone proteins
Mia Mayachar
Rapid HPLC method for detecting arginine derivatives
Tiffany Nguyen
PRMT7 substrate methylation in triple-negative breast cancer metastasis
Brianna Palomares
Transfection of PRMT7 in C2C12 muscle cells
Ashley Quan
Optimizing expression of p53 protein
Alexander Quinteros
Uncovering the regulation of PGC-1α
Isabella Rodriguez
Histone arginine methylation on microfluidic devices
Emmanuel Rodriguez-Soto
Histone arginine methylation on microfluidic devices; rapid HPLC for arginine derivatives
Chase Weaver
Disease pathology of ABE-treated GM1 gangliosidosis neuronal cells
Anja Weiss
Effects of temperature on PRMT7 expression in breast cancer cells
Summer and high-school researchers
Effects of UV light on histone arginine methylation in breast cancer cells
Alumni
Students who have completed research in the lab and graduated.