The Ubiquitin System and Protein Quality Control

​The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is the major regulatory pathway that maintains the homeostasis of the cellular proteome. It controls the stability, sub-cellular location and activation of virtually all cellular proteins. Dysfunction of the UPS can lead to the inappropriate accumulation of substrates, perturbation in the balance of the proteome and cellular stress and is implicated in a wide swath of human diseases from cancer to neurodegeneration. Thus, understanding how the UPS system coordinates protein quality control may identify strategies for therapeutic intervention in many human diseases.

Our group is interested in understanding the mechanisms that regulate protein quality control. We are particularly interested in how proteins once ubiquitinated are further processed for degradation. We employ a range of cell biological, biochemical and proteomic tools to understand how the UPS is dynamically organized. Read more about our on-going projects here
Picture
Lab News
* April 2023. Congratulations to Jacob for successfully defending! 

Check out the new paper from the lab in Nature Communicatons where we find that p97-UBXD8 regulates ER mitochondria contacts by modulation membrane lipid desaturation! Congratulations to first author Rakesh Ganji!

* Our new review on p97 and protein quality control is now available here! Congrats to Brittany and Rakesh for a great write up!

* Welcome to Crystal Zhang who is rotating in the lab!

* August 2022. The lab welcomes Ly a Tufts undergrad to the lab!

​* May 2022. The lab welcomes Kaylee Haynes a U Mass Boston undergrad and part of the 2022 BDBS cohort to the lab!

*May 2022. The lab welcomes Dhanush a Tufts undergrad to the lab!
​
* April 2022. Brittany gave a great lightening talk and poster at the CSHL Protein Homeostasis meeting.

* April 2022. We are so sad to see Siri leave the lab. We wish her success and happiness in her new position at Alan D'Andrea's lab at Dana Farber!

* April 2022. Congratulations to Iris on being  a recipient of the 2022 Presidential Award for Civic Life awarded by Tufts University! 

* Our meeting review on the Cure VCP Disease Annual Meeting is out now in Neurobiology of Disease!

* Checkout our pre-print on BioRxiv on the role of p97-UBXD8 in modulating organelle contact sites!

​*Iris wins first place in the Tufts Charlton Poster competition, congrats!!
* 08/01/2021 The lab welcomes new postdoc Michelle Johnson who is part pf the IRACDA program.
* 9.13.2021 Congratulations to Brittany for winning 1st place in the Oral Presentations and Rakesh for best Abstract at the Cure VCP Disease meeting! 
*8.27.2021 Congratulations to Jacob for receiving the Rosenberg Award for outstanding achievement is research and scholarship!
* 7/20/2021 We are grateful to the Tufts Springboard Awards for funding iPS studies in the lab!
* 7/12/21 Happy Birthday  to Rakesh!
6/18/21 Congratulations to Jacob for winning the 2nd prize at the MD-PhD poster competition! 
* 6/2/21 Happy Birthday to Richa!
* 4/25/21  AggreCount was featured in the ASBMB magazine!
* 3/15/21 Checkout our new manuscript  identifying a new role of p97-UBXN1 in aggresome formation. Congrats to Siri, Jacob and the Juo lab!
* 3/11/21 Congratulations to Iris for passing her Quals!
* 10/21/20 Our new paper describing AggreCount, an ImageJ script to quantify cellular aggregates is now online at JBC. Check it out here. Congrats to Jacob and Siri for a great paper and new tool for image analysis!
8/2020 Welcome to our new post-doc Richa Khanna!
* 7/9/20 Jacob passes his Quals, Congrats!
 * 6/30/20 Congratulations to Siri for being awarded  a Natalie V. Zucker Research Center for Women Scholars Award !
* 6/29/20 Congratulations to Rakesh and Molly Hodul (Juo Lab)  on a collaborative study that has been accepted at JBC. Find the in-press version here.
 * 6/1/20 Iris Montes joins the lab as our third graduate student! Welcome to Iris.