WHAT ARE STRESS GRANULES?

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Stress Granules (SG) are a type of condensate that form in response to environmental stress which represent a sophisticated mechanism that cells use to transiently recruit and compartmentalize stress specific mRNA, proteins, and metabolites. Our group is focused on elucidating Stress Granule biogenesis including assembly, disassembly, and composition under heat, low oxygen, salt, and osmotic stress.

OUR TOOLS

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We start by focusing on model plant Arabidopsis with parallel work on crops such as rice and tomato. Our approach uses cutting-edge biochemical and molecular biology tools, forward and reverse genetics, omics, and developing novel, single molecule imaging technologies. The second area of our research is the study of stress-signaling pathways through identification of stress-specific, small molecule-protein interactions. Our aim is to find novel stress specific interactions to find the missing piece in cellular signaling under different environmental stresses. We do this by using newly developed separation technologies combined with the most recent techniques for protein-metabolite interaction such as Thermal Proteome Profiling (TPP), Drug Affinity Responsive Target Stability (DARTs).