My laboratory studies protein localization and processing in the eukaryotic secretory pathway.

The long-term goals of the Nano-Omic-Bio-Engineering-Lab (NOBEL) are to understand and engineer muscle function. Muscle is the primary organ system that defines our complex movements and to a degree our life and joy (“joy’s soul lies in the doing” – W. Shakespeare). Of the 3 muscle types (skeletal, cardiac, smooth), we mostly focus on skeletal muscle, which is composed of a constellation of cell types, consumes significant amounts of metabolic energy, grows and adapts its structure and function based on its environment and uniquely repairs and regenerates when damaged. Generating...

Our objective is to obtain a better understanding of the development and function of neurons and glia in the peripheral nervous system using human genetics, molecular and cellular biology, and zebrafish transgenesis. The major end goal of these studies is to characterize how these cell types are affected in patients with peripheral neuropathies.

Our lab uses cellular and mouse models to study protein folding and misfolding in pancreatic beta cells (proinsulin) and thyroid epithelial cells (thyroglobulin), in order to discover new treatments for conformational diseases that affect these cells of the endocrine system. Our lab has described the cellular and molecular basis for the human disease known as Mutant INS gene-induced Diabetes of Youth, caused in most cases by expression of misfolded mutant proinsulin.  

My lab studies the mechanisms by which transcriptional enhancers control gene expression during development, using genetic, biochemical, evolutionary, and bioinformatics approaches. We focus on enhancers that are directly regulated by cell signaling pathways, including Hedgehog, Wnt, Notch, and MAPK, all of which play important roles in development and disease.

I am studying how immunotherapy such as treatment with PDL-1 and CTLA4 affects the immune profile of tumors in mice. We are interested in looking at the differences between responsive and unresponsive tumors.  I am also working on the role of how ER stress and glucose deprivation modulate Stat3 activation.

Discovery of new genes for human developmental brain disorders highlights the genes essential for brain development. The disease mechanisms associated with these genes are modeled using patient induced pluripotent stem cells and mice to understand the associated molecular pathology.

Our research group aims to combine both computational and wet lab strategies to answer questions related to the transcriptional regulatory control of human genes. We believe that a complex regulatory control determines the fates of individual non-coding regulatory elements and that the integration of diverse genetic, epigenetic, and disease data is the best way to explore this control. Using innovative computational and wet lab approaches the lab both characterizes the function of these regulatory elements as well as examines the effect of genetic variation in these regions.

The Brody lab is broadly focused on the molecular signals that underlie cardiac disease onset and progression. We have a specific interest in understanding how intracellular signaling is compartmentalized and regionally controlled by lipid modifications that modulate the function of signaling molecules in various cell types of the heart to control cardiac physiology and pathogenesis. Our laboratory utilizes a combination of mouse genetics, biochemistry, and molecular and chemical biology techniques to gain insight into pathophysiological signaling mechanisms that contribute to human...

Our laboratory is interested in understanding how cells use nutrients and how excess nutrient flux, as occurs in obesity, and diabetes, triggers insulin resistance and inflammatory responses. We are also interested in how intrinsic exercise capacity and exercise training can alter metabolism. We use metabolomics profiling and other 'omics technologies to profile metabolism in animals and humans.

Birth defects research, organogenesis, mouse models of human disease growth insufficiency including hormonal and skeletal dysplasia, hearing and vestibular dysfunction.

Our research team is identifying how the promiscuous intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii uses autophagy to persist indefinitely in its hosts and employs cytolytic proteins to escape from infected cells. We are also developing new tools to disrupt processes required for persistence and pathogenesis to ameliorate disease.

Understanding the role of mitophagy in colon cancer iron regulation, and investigating metabolic regulations of ER-mitochondria contact sites in cancer.

We study the communications between transcription factors that result in epigenetic modifications at super-enhancers of oncogenes. These changes drive the development of normal lymphocytes , but also the generation of cancer stem cells in childhood leukemia. By targeting specific, synthetic lethal interactions responsible for the context dependence of transcription factors in cancer, we might combat the cancer functions of transcription factors without potential adverse consequences of total inhibition.

My lab is mainly focusing on biochemical and structural studies on kinetochore assembly, histone chaperones, and Sestrin-mediated mTORC1 regulation.

Our lab is interested in the proteolytic ECM remodeling of adipose tissues in development and obesity. Using 3-D adipocyte differentiation model and a series of genetically modified mice, we aim to define a molecular mechanism that links ECM remodeling to the regulation of organ function in development and diseases.

Biology contravenes entropy, yet many biological mechanisms are sensitive to noise and thus take advantage of entropy as a generative force. Stochastic mechanisms contribute to the production of antibodies, olfactory receptor choice, and neuronal self-avoidance. The Clowney lab is interested in how non-deterministic mechanisms requiring relatively little genetic information can produce diverse molecular affinities and cellular behaviors across cells of a single ontogenetic type.

 I am studying the H. pylori virulence factor vacuolating cytotoxin A (VacA). Using single-particle cryo-EM, I am determining VacA's pore-form and characterizing its membrane interactions. 

Our laboratory studies differentiation and homeostasis in complex epithelia, in health and in disease (e.g., monogenic disorders, cancer). We study these processes from the unique perspective of the keratin intermediate filament multigene family, and focus on skin epithelia. Our research activities range from the creation and validation of transgenic mouse models in vivo to biochemical and biophysical studies on purified proteins in vitro.

I study the biosynthetic trafficking of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCR localization to the the cell surface is critical for functional coupling to both extracellular agonists and G-protein effectors on the plasma membrane. Despite the functional importance of GPCR localization to the plasma membrane, relatively little is known about the biosynthetic trafficking of these receptors to the cell surface. I would like to understand how the trafficking of these receptors to the cell surface is regulated and how we can target receptors to the surface to increase signaling.