Regulation of Sterol Homeostasis Elevated serum cholesterol is a primary risk factor for heart disease. A negative feedback mechanism prevents excessive cellular cholesterol accumulation by regulating SREBP, a membrane-bound transcription factor that activates genes required for cholesterol biosynthesis and...
Background and Summary:Epithelial cells in a tissue live a crowded life connected to, and interacting with, other cell types, the extracellular matrix, and diverse signaling molecules. A fundamental question in biology is: how do the constituent cells of an...
Understanding how the information in the genome is utilized is one of the central questions in modern biology. It has become clear that a critical level of gene regulation occurs through the chemical modification of both the DNA itself...
Our laboratory studies the basic molecular mechanisms of programmed cell death, an evolutionarily conserved process to eliminate cells. Because these pathways normally contribute to the millions of cell deaths that occur per day per individual, defects in cell death...
Molecular mechanisms underlying accurate chromosome segregation Since Flemming introduced the term “mitosis” over 100 years ago, a challenge has been to understand how cells divide and faithfully transmit chromosomes at each cell division. Errors in the distribution of chromosomes...
Mechanisms of gradient sensing and chemotaxis are conserved in mammalian leukocytes and Dictyostelium amoebae. Both cells use G protein linked signaling pathways. PH domains specific for PtdIns(3,4)P2 and PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 bind to the membrane at the leading edge of the...
Our research is highly collaborative and focuses on developing, optimizing and applying innovative mass spectrometry strategies to reveal the proteins, their modifications, interactomes and adductomes in modulating or monitoring human health and disease. Ongoing research: Albumin Adductome: Air pollution...
My laboratory focuses on developing novel single-molecule imaging tools in live cells to probe various dynamic aspects of cellular processes. We develop single-molecule gene expression reporting systems and chromosomal DNA conformation markers to probe the dynamics of gene regulation...