Biology makes the world go round

Hey world,

I'm in New Haven, in our own wonderful Bass center on Science Hill, working in Prof. Hochstrasser's lab. His lab studies protein degradation - the pathways and mechanisms that function in our cells when misfolded, mutated, or regulatory proteins need to be degraded. I'm looking at 3 proteins that are targeted by the enzyme Doa10 and get degraded by the endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation (ERAD) pathway in yeast, specifically trying to figure out how the degradation signals of these proteins are associated with the membrane of the ER, if at all. Application: none yet, but interestingly enough the same pathway is at work in cystic fibrosis.

After 4.5 weeks of growing out my yeast strains, screwing it up, repeating, and running some controls - I'm finally starting my experiment tomorrow!!

-Liya