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Dr. Sonya Neal of the University of California, San Diego presents
September 12, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Sonya Neal, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
University of California, San Diego
Title of talk: “The role of rhomboid superfamily: Guardians of membrane-related processes and homeostasis”
This seminar will be in 1131 Bioinformatics.
Please join us and show support for our seminar speakers!
(For those unable to attend, a zoom link is available upon request to MiMi Le.)
Host: Mike Emanuele
From Dr. Neal’s website:
“Understanding the mechanistic underpinnings and medical importance of misfolded proteins”
Life is harsh, and hard on protein structure. Continuously-produced misfolded proteins represent a threat to proper cell and organ function. To survive this threat, organisms are equipped with quality control systems to maintain properly folded proteins; a process known as protein homeostasis. For the past two decades, it has become increasingly clear that protein homeostasis is critical to the health of cells and organisms. Defects in protein homeostasis underlie many of the most pressing maladies, including aging, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Our research strives to understand the basic biology of protein homeostasis and how organisms use quality control pathways to mitigate this universal biological stress. There are three questions that motivate our research:
- How do cells maintain protein homeostasis?
- How do changes in protein homeostasis lead to pathology?
- Can modulation of protein homeostasis be used to treat disease?
Our research aim is to understand the cellular and tissue-specific roles of factors involved in protein quality control pathways, with a particular emphasis on the pathways that detect and specifically destroy these dangerous molecules. An understanding of these pathways allows us to define the mechanisms that protect the organismal proteome in health and disease, and eventually devise methods to harness cellular quality control to modify the proteome in the laboratory and the clinic. As a first step towards this goal, we are focused on discovering and studying proteostasis pathways in yeast, mammalian cells and zebrafish, allowing us to synergistically capitalize on the investigative strengths that each has to offer.
Dr. Neal’s website: https://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/seneal.html
Lab website: https://neallab.biology.ucsd.edu/
