Dr. David A. Mills

Professor, Department of Viticulture and Enology, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

B.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.S. University of Minnesota
Ph.D. Microbiology, University of Minnesota

Office: 3142 RMI North Building
Phone: 530-754-7821
Fax: 530-752-0382
Email: damills(at)ucdavis.edu
Website: http://mills.ucdavis.edu/

Dr. Mills studies the molecular biology of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in food/beverage fermentations or active as probiotics in intestinal health. A general goal of his research is to investigate linkage between genome content, ecological context, and specific strain behavior that enables a more comprehensive understanding of LAB biology in their “working” environments. His research as employed a variety of molecular tools to characterize the microbial ecology of wine fermentations in order to reveal patterns of microbial successions that take place in both favorable and unfavorable production outcomes. Dr. Mills co-founded the Lactic Acid Bacteria Genomic Consortium, a group which seeks to forward genomic studies on LAB. His lab has characterized the genomes of several wine-related LAB including Oenococcus oeni, the common malolactic starter culture. This work has recently lead to the discovery that the genus Oenococcus is hypermutable. Working with collaborators at USDA, Dr. Mills is currently characterizing the genome of Lactobacillus buchneri, a spoilage organism of both wine and biofuel fermentations. Dr. Mills is also part of the Milk Bioactives Consortium, a UCD group that seeks to characterize the prebiotic nature of milk oligosaccharides. As part of that work the Mills lab recently sequenced the genome of Bifidobacterium longum bv infantis, a probiotic that grows on human milk oligosaccharides as a sole carbon source.

Dr. Mills teaches a number of courses including: Wine Microbiology (VEN128), Wine Microbiology Laboratory (VEN128L), Advances in Wine Science (VEN224). In addition Dr. Mills participates in several other Food Science and Microbiology courses. Dr. Mills has served as a Waksman Foundation Lecturer for the American Society for Microbiology and as on the editorial board of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Dr. Mills currently serves as an associate editor for the journal Microbiology and is the Chair-Elect of the Food Microbiology section of ASM.

For a more detailed description of the activities in the Mills lab go to: http://mills.ucdavis.edu/

Marcobal, A., D. Sela, Y. I. Wolf, K. Makarova and D. A. Mills. 2008. Hypermutability and its role in the evolution of the genus Oenococcus. Journal of Bacteriology 190:564-570. (January Issue Cover)

Phister, T. G., H. Rawsthorne, L. Joseph and D. A. Mills. 2007. Quantitative real-time PCR assay for detection and enumeration of Hanseniaspora from wine and juice. American Journal of Enology and Viticulture. 58: 229-233.

Marcobal, A., M. Underwood and D. A. Mills. Rapid determination of the bacterial composition of commercial probiotic products by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. 2008. Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition. 46:608–611.

Sela, D. A., J. Chapman, A. Adeuya, T.R. Whitehead, A. Lapidus, D.S. Rokhsar, C.B. Lebrilla, J.B German, N.P. Price, P.M. Richardson, and D.A. Mills. 2008. The complete genome sequence of Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis suggests adaptation for milk utilization within the infant microbiome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:18964-18969.

LoCascio, R. G., M. R. Ninoneuvo, S. R. Kronewitter, S. F. Freeman, J. B. German, C. B. Lebrilla, and D. A. Mills. A versatile and scalable strategy for glycoprofiling bifidobacterial consumption of human milk oligosaccharides.  Microbial Biotechnology. (In Press).

Sela, D., H. Rawsthorne, and D. A. Mills. 2007. Characterization of the lactococcal group II intron target site in its native host. Plasmid 58:127-139.

Marcobal, A. and D. A. Mills. Genomics of Oenococcus oeni and other lactic acid bacteria. 2008. In Koning, H., Uden, G. and Frohlich, J. Eds. Biology of Microorganisms on Grapes, in Musts and Wine. Springer, New York. (In Press).

Makarova, K., A. Slesarev, Y. Wolf, A. Sorokin, B. Mirkin, E. Koonin, A. Pavlov, N. Pavlova, V. Karamychev, N. Polouchine, V. Shakhova, I. Grigoriev, Y. Lou, D. Rohksar, S. Lucas, K. Huang, D. M. Goodstein, T. Hawkins, V. Plengvidhya, D. Welker, J. Hughes, Y. Goh, A. Benson, K. Baldwin, J.-H. Lee, I. Díaz-Muñiz, B. Dosti, V. Smeianov, W. Wechter, R. Barabote, G. Lorca, E. Altermann, R. Barrangou, B. Ganesan, Y. Xie, H. Rawsthorne, D. Tamir, C. Parker, L. McKay, F. Breidt, J. Broadbent, R. Hutkins, D. O’Sullivan, J. Steele, G. Unlu, M. Saier, T. Klaenhammer, P. Richardson, S. Kozyavkin, B. Weimer, and D. A. Mills. 2006. Comparative genomics of the lactic acid bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:15611-15616.

NIH

USDA

Dairy Management Inc.

Department of Energy

American Vineyard Foundation

California Competitive Grants Program for Research in Viticulture and Enology

California Dairy Research Foundation

UC Discovery Program