Congratulations to Dr. Sergi Regot (Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics) for receiving the 2024 Hamilton Smith Award for Innovative Research Award. This award recognizes and advances innovative research by early career faculty members in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences by providing them with funding to pursue their most creative ideas.
Dr. Regot’s research focuses on how the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) system integrates diverse signals to produce distinct and appropriate responses, including the decision by a cell to divide, migrate, or die. More specifically, the Regot lab has developed fluorescent sensors and the associated imaging and computational tools to quantitatively understand MAPK signaling events at the single-cell and single-molecule levels. Using these tools, the Regot laboratory has uncovered unexpected cell-to-cell heterogeneity and temporal complexity in MAPK signaling. The Regot laboratory has surveyed all 24 of the MAP3Ks in the human genome and found that each elicits unique combinatorial patterns of downstream MAPK activities that drive opposing cell fates (i.e. apoptosis vs. proliferation). In collaboration with the laboratory of Rachel Green, the Regot laboratory found that the MAPK3K ZAK⍺ is activated by ribosome collisions, which occur when ribosomes stall on messages during translation, leading either to cell cycle arrest or apoptosis. Most recently, the Regot laboratory discovered that activation of the G2/M checkpoint by stress-induced MAPKs causes cells in G2 to exit the cell cycle, priming these cells for endo-reduplication of the genome.