The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Susan Lindquist, Ph.D., member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; professor of biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Speaker bio(s)

Many neurodegenerative diseases result from basic problems in protein folding and homeostasis. These disorders appear to have little in common besides their devastating effects on patients and their families. However, they share the occurrence of complexes of misfolded, aggregated proteins in affected neurons. In Parkinson’s disease the protein is alpha-synuclein (α-syn) and in Alzheimer’s disease Aβ and tau are involved. Exploiting the highly conserved nature of eukaryotic cell biology and protein homeostasis mechanisms, Dr. Lindquist and her team have developed yeast models for the pathologies caused by these proteins. Yeast cells offer the opportunity for systematic, high throughput combinatorial analyses of causative factors and the discovery of pathology modifiers. Remarkably, each of the models exhibits cellular toxicity by a different mechanism and each yields a discovery platform directly relevant to human disease.

 

Yeast cells overexpressing human α-syn or Aβ allow genetic and chemical screens, which would only be possible in yeast at such high throughput. The Lindquist lab’s α-syn screens yielded genes and compounds that rescued dopaminergic neurons in nematode, fruit fly and rat primary midbrain cultures as well as cortical human neurons differentiated from the iPS cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease. The lab’s Aβ screens revealed genes and compounds that specifically rescue neurons from Aβ and other Alzheimer’s disease risk factors. Combining these discovery platforms with state-of-the art chemical genetics has led to the identification of compounds with high therapeutic potential as well as insight into their mechanisms of action.

 

Dr. Lindquist received her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. She was the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Medical Sciences at the University of Chicago before joining the Whitehead Institute in 2001. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Her honors also include the National Medal of Science, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the Genetics Society of America Medal, the Max Delbrück Medal, the Mendel Medal, the E.B. Wilson Medal, the DART/NYU Biotechnology Award and the Glenn Award for Research in Aging.

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Alena Powell

Phone

(212) 327-7745

Sponsor

Alena Powell
(212) 327-7745
apowell@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=3563