Ragusa Lab
Principal Investigator: Michael Joseph Ragusa
Institution: Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Autophagy is a cellular process in which cytosolic material is captured in double-membrane vesicles, termed autophagosomes. Subsequently, autophagosomes fuse with the vacuole, in yeast, or lysosomes, in mammalian cells, leading to the degradation of the captured contents. Autophagy can capture a diversity of cytosolic cargos, including organelles, large protein aggregates and intracellular pathogens. As such, autophagy plays critical roles in maintaining organelle quality, preventing the accumulation of protein aggregates and clearing intracellular pathogens. Therefore, defects in autophagy have been associated with various human diseases, including cancer, neurodegenerative disease and inflammatory disease. During autophagy, cargo can be captured via a non-selective or selective mechanism. In selective autophagy, cargos are identified by selective autophagy receptors (SARs). SARs are either soluble cytosolic proteins recruited to the cargo upon autophagy initiation or integral membrane proteins embedded in the organelle membrane that will become a cargo for selective autophagy. While the mechanisms by which cytosolic SARs initiate selective autophagy have become increasingly clear…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM128663-08: Dissecting the Molecular Mechanisms of Selective Autophagy (2026)
- 5R35GM128663-07: Dissecting the Molecular Mechanisms of Selective Autophagy (2025)
- 2R35GM128663-06: Dissecting the Molecular Mechanisms of Selective Autophagy (2024)
- 5UH2AI178082-02: Investigating the molecular mechanisms of membrane remodeling by coronaviruses (2024)
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