Daniel Levy, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology
Background: B.S. California Institute of Technology; Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco; American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley; joined UW in 2011.
Why UW? “I was immediately excited about the research going on.” Levy uses frogs as the model organism for his research, as does fellow UW molecular biologist Jay Gatlin, so Levy knew he could hit the ground running with his own research projects.
Research: Inside each cell is a nucleus—a compartment that contains the genetic information directing how the cell grows and behaves. Large cells generally have large nuclei, while smaller cells have smaller nuclei, but little is known about how cells regulate their nuclear size. This is where Levy’s research comes in.
“It turns out there are some really interesting disease implications when it comes to nuclear size regulation because in cancer cells, the nucleus is usually much larger. The real goal of my lab is to try to understand the basic mechanisms that control the size of the nucleus with the hope that when we have that basic cell biological understanding, we might apply it to cancer diagnosis or treatment.”
Levy and his team have already identified specific proteins that are important for controlling nuclear size in frog cells, and these same proteins also seem to be important for controlling nuclear size in humans.
“This change in nuclear size is certainly used diagnostically, but in terms of treatment approaches for cancer, no one has really targeted nuclear size. If these cells are really dependent on these larger nuclei for their cancerous growth, and we could specifically target that, we might be able to knock out the cancer cells but not affect the normal cells.”
About the Science Initiative: “I’m really excited about having a new building and new lab space. One of the big issues with molecular biology is that we’re split up right now, which is not ideal for collaboration.”
|
3/7 |