105 Stanley Hall

Jose Rodriguez, University of California, Los Angeles Prions are proteinaceous infectious particles that allow the propagation and inheritance of structural information by proteins. Prions populate the tree of life, propagating as fibrils both in laboratory strains and in the wild. Disease-causing prions are responsible for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders affecting…

Suzanne Pfeffer, Stanford University School of Medicine Pathogenic mutations in the Parkinson’s disease-associated LRRK2 kinase increase its activity and lead to phosphorylation of a subset of Rab GTPases that are master regulators of membrane traffic events. Rab phosphorylation flips a switch: Rabs bind new partners, triggering dominant consequences for cell physiology that include blocking primary…