From:
Portland, Oregon
Education:
PhD: Cell and Developmental Biology
UC Davis advisor Karen Zito
BS: Genetics, UC Davis
Hobbies:
When I'm not in the lab trying to puzzle out how to convince mammalian tissues to be more like their amphibian relatives, you can usually find me out hiking or backpacking with friends in the mountains, or practicing martial arts when I'm still in the Sacramento valley.
Research Interests:
Over the years, I've gone from fruit fly speciation and cryptic nocturnal seedling herbivory to synaptic plasticity and the ubiquitin-proteasome system, but my current burning question in the Borodinsky lab is the molecular mechanisms that drive neural regeneration.
Of the thousands of people who suffer serious injury to the spinal cord or brain, very few can be expected to achieve substantial neurological recovery. In order to address this monumental medical challenge, I study the impressive regenerative abilities of Xenopus laevis tadpoles, which are far more able to replace lost or damaged spinal cord than humans, or even adult frogs.
I have discovered that following tail amputation, the regeneration of both muscle and spinal cord depends on the Hedgehog signaling pathway. Blocking or ectopically activating this potent regulator of cell behavior results in abnormal regeneration, while inhibiting the primary canonical regulators of downstream Hedgehog signaling, the Gli1/2 transcription factors, has very little effect on tissue regeneration. I have also isolated the activity of protein kinase A and the transcription factor CREB as potential non-canonical partners in Hedgehog-dependent regeneration, and I'm currently working on single cell RNAseq to identify other interacting signaling pathways and downstream mediators.