Research

The mission of the lab is to study the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases and to identify genes that carry variants that increase the risk for development of those diseases.

Simultaneously, the lab aspires to remain at the cutting edge in terms of cellular and molecular biology techniques and to advance the neurodegeneration field by developing innovative tools and technologies that we will share with the research community.

Mission of the Lab

Techniques

Functional Genomics High Throughput Screens

Research Projects

  • The role of Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation (LLPS) in the pathogenesis of Neurodegenerative Diseases.

  • In vivo and in vitro High Throughput Screens.

  • Pathways underlying the formation of alpha-synuclein inclusions in Parkinson’s Disease.

  • Development of novel, genetically encoded tools to model disease mechanisms.

  • Mechanistic follow-up studies on genes identified through High Throughput Screens.

Core facilities available at Rutgers
Rutgers has extensive core facilities, most of which are located at the Piscataway campus at which the lab is based, and include proteomics, lipidomics, histology, Zeiss and Leica confocals, GE InCell Analyzer 6000, spectral flow cytometers, and many more. Additional facilities can be found at the Newark campus, including the Amnis ImageStream X MarkII flow cytometer, BD flow cytometry analyzers and 10x genomics Visium. A searchable website listing the core facilities can be found here.

Collaborations
We have an extensive network of collaborators from within Rutgers and other institutions including UCL, Harvard, Yale, Boston University, the University of Manchester and through the International Parkinson’s disease Genomics Consortium (IPDGC). Our collaborators facilitate access to human tissue, model systems, patient materials and genetic data. We also have joint research projects and exchange expertise on experimental and analysis techniques, which enables us to pursue innovative and ambitious research projects.

We are always open to new collaborations that address exciting research questions and fit in with the overall research theme of our lab.