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The Yale Cell Biology Department is excited to welcome Dr. Jonathon Ditlev as an upcoming seminar speaker on February 10th. Dr. Ditlev is a professor in the University of Toronto Department of Biochemistry and a Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at the SickKids Research Institute. His research focuses on understanding how biological phase separation regulates signal transduction in neuronal and immune cells, using a combination of biophysical analysis, biochemical reconstitution, and cell biology. In this interview, Dr. Ditlev shares the scientific questions currently driving his lab, what inspired his path into research, his interests outside of science, and his vision for the future of his lab.

Cell Biology Department Seminars-Meet Our Speaker: Rebecca Voorhees, PhD, Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering , HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar, California Institute of Technology

Yale researchers study a mass extinction from the distant past, uncover hidden brain networks, and share expertise at an international meeting on enhanced weathering.

With state-of-the-art research facilities and collaborative spaces, Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute is on a mission to understand human cognition by bridging academic disciplines.

A collection of recent journal publications from Yale School of Medicine researchers.

Gillian Griffiths, PhD, thinks of the collaboration between cell biology and clinical science as the “golden interface”—a place where researchers can harness the knowledge of both fields to generate groundbreaking discoveries.

Since 1998, Women’s Health Research at Yale’s signature Pilot Project Program has provided critical seed funding for Yale faculty examining sex differences across health in conditions that affect women differently, disproportionately, and uniquely. Our program serves as an incubator for catalyzing new approaches to understanding the health of women, and/or the influence of sex differences on health, consistent with the NIH definition. The 2025-26 application process is now open.

Professor Taekjip Ha is a world-renowned biophysicist whose pioneering work in single-molecule fluorescence and force spectroscopy has transformed how scientists visualize and understand molecular mechanisms. He is the George D. Yancopoulos in Honor of Frederick W. Alt Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Investigator in the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he also serves as Director. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2005, Prof. Ha is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His career has been marked by both technological innovation and biological discovery, earning him numerous accolades—including the Kazuhito Kinosita Award and the Gregory Weber Award—and establishing him as one of the leading figures in modern biophysics.

Parkinson’s disease is strongly linked to overactivation of a protein called LRRK2, but what turns this kinase on inside cells has remained unclear. In this study, we show that physical stress on lysosomes acts as a powerful trigger for LRRK2 activation. When lysosomes swell due to osmotic imbalance, they recruit signaling proteins called Rabs that recruit and activate LRRK2. Other types of lysosomal damage activate LRRK2 through a complementary pathway. Together, our findings reveal how lysosomes act as stress sensors that control LRRK2 activity, helping explain how disrupted lysosome function potentially contributes to Parkinson’s disease.