Megan McClean

LAB WEBSITE:

McClean Lab

FOCUS GROUPS:

Systems Biology; Molecular & Genome Biology of Microbes, Transcriptional Mechanisms

RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:

Cells must convert information about the environment into the activity of intracellular effectors, such as transcription factors or metabolic enzymes, in order to generate an appropriate cellular response. A cell “knows” only so much about an external signal as is transmitted through the appropriate signaling pathway to a downstream effector. How signaling pathways are wired to perform appropriate transformations on their input signals and how networks can be tuned on
adaptive and evolutionary timescales to adjust these transformations remains an outstanding question. Furthermore, how an effector’s activation carries information and produces an appropriate cellular response is often poorly understood. Information can be encoded in the identity and/or dynamics of an effector. How signaling networks control the dynamics of effector activation and how these dynamics are decoded by promoters to generate distinct gene expression programs is of particular interest. These questions represent critical gaps in our understanding of how healthy and diseased cells respond, or make decisions, in response to
stimuli. My research uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or budding yeast, as a model organism for addressing these questions in biological signal processing. More recently we have started to examine the regulation of dispersion from pathogenic Candida albicans biofilms. Throughout all work, there is a bioengineering thread, which is focused on the development of optogenetic tools for controlling cellular signaling.

ALSO A TRAINER IN THE FOLLOWING PROGRAMS:

Biomedical Engineering, Biophysics Graduate Program, Microbiology Doctoral Training Program (MDTP)

PERFORM A PUBMED PUBLICATION SEARCH