Ramanujan Hegde received his MD and PhD from UCSF in 1999. After three years at the National Cancer Institute as an NCI Scholar, he joined CBMB in 2002 as head of its Unit on Protein Biogenesis.
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Phone: 301-496-4855
Email: hegder@mail.nih.gov
The Hegde lab seeks to understand the synthesis, maturation, sorting, and metabolism of secretory and membrane proteins. This class of proteins is essential to all intercellular and most intracellular communication, and their precise locations and abundances are tightly regulated to maintain normal organismal physiology. Indeed, the majority of current drug targets affect secreted and membrane proteins, underscoring their central role in human biology.
Our goals are to develop a molecular level understanding of the pathways of secretory and membrane protein biosynthesis and metabolism. We are especially interested in the regulatory machinery controlling protein entry and insertion into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the site where nearly all secreted and membrane proteins are first made. Biochemical approaches are being employed to purify, identify, and functionally reconstitute the machinery underlying these basic cellular pathways. In parallel, the physiologic importance of regulating the metabolism of secretory and membrane proteins are being analyzed in cellular and whole animal models.
We anticipate that a greater understanding of these basic cellular pathways will provide insight into the various diseases caused by protein misfolding and processing. Click on the topics below to learn more about some of the specifc research directions Hegde lab members are currently studying.
Projects
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| Translocational Regulation | Protein Misfolding Diseases | Tail-anchored Proteins | Protein Degredation |
