We study how protein folding quality control and aggregation quality control are regulated in the cell over space and time. To put it slightly differently, we believe that protein folding quality control and aggregation quality control are regulated by controlling the sub-cellular distribution of specific quality control components at different times during the life of an organism or a cell and at stressful conditions. 

The overall goal of our lab is to develop a full mechanistic understanding of neurodegenerative disease (including Huntington's, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Lou Gehrig's Diseases), following the causative chain from the fundamental biology of intracellular quality control all the way up to the selective lethality of proteotoxic stress at the level of neural networks.

Our work is aimed at relating what we know about protein folding quality control and aggregation quality control at the biochemical level to the cell biological and physiological phenomena of inclusion formation that we observe in neurodegenerative diseases.  To this end, we apply a diverse set of tools from biochemistry, to yeast genetics, mammalian cell biology, drug screens, and simple model organisms.