Current Research & Projects

Viral hairpins and Cellular SNAREpins

Our lab is working to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of vesicular transport within cells and the secretion of proteins and neurotransmitters.

Projects include:

1. The biochemical and biophysical mechanisms of vesicle budding and fusion;
2. Cellular regulation of vesicle fusion in exocytosis and synaptic transmission;
3. Structural and functional organization of the Golgi apparatus from a cellular systems view.

We take an interdisciplinary approach which includes cell-free biochemistry, single molecule biophysics, high resolution optical imaging of single events/single molecules in the cell and in cell-free formats.

The overall goal is to understand transport pathways form structural mechanism to cellular physiology. The latter is facilitated by high throughput functional genomics at the cellular level (see Yale Center for High Throughput Cell Biology).

We have a strong interest in new lab members who bring backgrounds in chemistry, physics, and engineering.