Nemhauser Lab
Principal Investigator: Jennifer L Nemhauser
Institution: University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Coordinating the timing of responses both within and between cells is critical for multicellular behaviors like development. One way to evolve (or engineer) a molecular pacer is via induced turnover of transcriptional repressors acting at multiple loci—a solution observed in diverse eukaryotes. Yet we know remarkably little about how protein degradation kinetics translate into downstream transcriptional responses that lead to outcomes like changes in cell fate. One possible reason is the lack of available models for high-resolution structure-function analysis of degradation-linked transcriptional activation. We have leveraged the auxin response, at the heart of nearly every aspect of plant biology, as a model to investigate general principles underlying ubiquitin-mediated degradation and its connection to transcriptional activation and morphogenesis. The small-molecule triggered degradation in the auxin pathway offers a unique advantage for these studies, and has facilitated our engineering of auxin-induced degradation and transcriptional activation in yeast. Our extensive work with our ‘AuxInYeast’ system has led to a central hypothesis: the auxin system functions as a development…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM148135-04: Control of protein degradation and transcriptional dynamics in the auxin response (2026)
- 5R35GM148135-03: Control of protein degradation and transcriptional dynamics in the auxin response (2025)
- 5R35GM148135-02: Control of protein degradation and transcriptional dynamics in the auxin response (2024)
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