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Meet the Life Sciences Institute Charter Faculty
A chemist who has spent her career working
at the interface with biology, Fierke
studies enzymes, the chemical catalysts
of living systems. One focus of her current
work is the ubiquitous metal zinc and
the role it plays in chemical catalysis
and regulation. She wants to understand
how zinc levels are regulated and what
functions the metal plays in mammalian
cells. New treatments to regulate zinc
concentrations may decrease neuron injury
that occurs after stroke, hemorrhage,
seizures or brain trauma. Her lab also
is investigating an enzyme that puts fat-based
“tags,” much like mailing
labels, onto proteins to direct them from
the cell’s interior to its outer
membrane. She also is looking at enzymes
that catalyze key metabolic reactions
in bacteria. Research in these areas may
point to new methods for interrupting
the operation of cancer cells and for
developing new antibiotics.
As a physician specializing in blood disorders and genetics, Ginsburg studies the genetics and molecular biology of blood clotting. There is a complex cascade of chemical signals that forms a clot quickly to staunch bleeding from a wound, but these signals also are controlled well enough that they don’t normally careen out of control and create clots where they would be damaging. “It’s got to be just right,” Ginsburg says. He is studying human families with bleeding disorders like hemophilia and mice with genetic “knockouts” to tease apart the complex interactions of biomolecules that control the clotting response.
Klionsky uses baker’s yeast as a model organism to study how proteins are moved around the cell with great specificity, and how the organelles, machines within the cell, develop and do their work. Sorting the proteins out so that they go to the proper organelle and do the right job is essential to the proper functioning of the cell, but little is understood about it. Klionsky’s work also explores “autophagy,” the main protein disassembly and recycling system inside the cell, and how it responds to starvation conditions by cannibalizing parts of the cell. This work offers intriguing clues into a variety of human diseases, including cancer, cardiomyopathy (weakening and enlargement of the heart) and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Saltiel’s trailblazing work on the hormone Insulin and its role in regulating cellular sugar levels has expanded into an investigation of how cells send and receive signals. “Cell signaling encompasses everything from the cell surface to the nucleus and everything in between,” Saltiel says. “It’s not new–it’s been hot for a long time–but there’s so much to learn.” Saltiel’s laboratory has pioneered the concept that cell signaling is confined to defined pathways within the cell, adding another level of complexity to our understanding of cellular regulation. A 1995 paper he co-authored on cellular signaling remains the most cited paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Citation rates are an indicator of a paper’s significance.) Much of his career has been spent in private-sector pharmaceutical work, most recently with Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor. Saltiel joined the institute in March 2001 as its first faculty member. More stories:
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