Mikhail Matz

Mikhail (Misha) V. Matz is a Russian-American Associate Professor of biology at the University of Texas at Austin.

In 1999 his paper on cloning of six homological fluorescent proteins into green fluorescent protein of A. victoria and discovery of its usefulness in Xenopus embryos got him a 1288 citations, making it the highest cited article in his career. In 2004 Misha Matz along with Juan A. Ugalde and Belinda S. W. Chang have made a discovery of color changing by great star coral. It was revealed that the common ancestor of both green and red proteins is green one. In 2006 he and Rasmus Nielsen have published a chapter on DNA barcoding in Systematic Biology of Oxford Academic Press.

In 2009 he along with colleagues have traveled to Bahamas where he discovered fossils of G. sphaerica a protozoan creature. In early 2015 he and S. Banu Ozkan have published an article regarding the A. victoria jellyfish which glows bright green under ultraviolet light when green fluorescent protein was added. The study was recorded in journal called Structure and sparked further interest into its study. In 2015 he and Line K. Bay have studied A. millepora on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and discovered that this species of corals are heat resistant.