Biological Questions and Goals  

The brain is an assembly of multiple regions, each specialized in unique tasks.  How these regions act and interact and how they promote diverse biological behaviors remain unknown. The striatum in the brain is the central communication hub deep that interacts with multiple distant regions, as well as with local networks, to elicit fundamental motor functions such as walking, running, and habit formation. However, the neural mechanisms that control brain functions are not fully understood.

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The major goal of our laboratory is to identify the details of cellular and biochemical mechanisms involved in brain functions and how their dysfunction promotes neuronal vulnerability in neurological disorders such as Parkinson Disease (PD), Huntington Disease (HD), and Alzheimer disease (AD). Our goals are to identify the neuron-to-neuron transport features and functions of proteins that may represent a radical new way of communication in the brain. We will identify and characterize novel brain protein–protein networks that may act as a molecular force for the sustained behavioral abnormalities in neurological disorders.

 

Further, we intend to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms of translational defects in neurodegenerative disease and how that may contribute to AD, HD and PD pathogenesis.