What we do....
Neurodegenerative diseases affect a staggering percentage of population worldwide. However, these diseases are often untreatable because of the lack of our understanding of the disease biology. The overarching goal of our lab is to investigate molecular mechanisms of membrane trafficking and quality control pathways in neurodegenerative disorders with a special emphasis on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. Using transgenic mouse models of AD and PD and state-of-the art imaging approaches, we are investigating the following questions; (1) How neurons coordinate the transport of organelles along the axons (2) How neurons ensure quality of organelles. My long-term goal is to apply the fundamental knowledge of organelle biology to approach neurological disorders.
Organelles on The Move: Membrane Trafficking in Neurons Neurons have three sub cellular compartments; Soma, Proximal Dendrites and long axons. Becuase of this complex structural geometry, they face unique challenges in distributing the organelles across different sub compartments. We study how trafficking pathways ensure organelle distribution across these compartments. Our lab is particularly interested in how organelle trafficking is regulated in neurons and how they go awry in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Ongoing projects in the lab address the following questions: (1) Mechanistic and regulatory aspects of endo-lysosomal and mitochondrial trafficking and positioning; (2) Dynamic interplay between cytoskeleton and adaptor proteins during the transport; (3) How neurons coordinate the transport of multiple organelle along the same axon in health and disease. We are using primary neuron cultures and state-of-the-art live cell imaging approaches to address these questions in neuronal health and disease.
Fixing the Damaged Organelles: Organelle Quality Control in Neurons Neurons heavily rely on quality control pathways to remove protein aggregates and defective organelles because of their post mitotic and long-lived nature. So, we are interested in understanding whether and how autophagy and other quality control pathways are special in neurons compared to proliferating cells. Our long-term goal is to understand the causal relation between defective organelle quality control and disease progression in Alzheimer's Disease. Further, we would like to design therapeutic options, targeting these pathways to slow down AD pathology.
