Biology

The Jacobs-Wagner lab has two main research interests:

In the next 50 years, one of the greatest advances we can make for global human health is the realization of a society that is fully sustainable. My research aims to improve agricultural sustainability by using a holistic approach that integrates across genetic, cellular and organismal scales to understand how plants survive stressful environments (Dinneny, 2015a; 2019).

The Kopito laboratory seeks a molecular understanding of how cells maintain the fidelity of their proteomes. Unlike DNA, which can be repaired if damaged or incorrectly made, proteins cannot be mended. Instead, damaged or incorrectly synthesized proteins must be rapidly and efficiently destroyed lest they form toxic aggregates.

Underlying the complexity of the human body is the ability of our cells to adopt diverse forms and functions. This process of cell differentiation requires cells to polarize, translating developmental information into cell-type specific arrangements of intracellular structures. The major goal of the research in my laboratory is to understand how cells build these functional intracellular patterns during development.

Proteins embedded in the cell envelope of bacteria perform multiple important functions, including signaling, nutrient acquisition, and export of virulence factors. Understanding the structure and functions of these proteins is critical for the development of new anti-bacterial therapies. Currently, the lab focuses on both ABC transporters and lipoproteins of Gram-negative bacteria. The ultimate goal of the research to translate basic lipoprotein research into novel therapuetics.

We combine biophysical methods with in vivo approaches to understand how viruses such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infect host cells and elicit specific humoral immune responses. Our research will translate knowledge of the structural correlates of antibody-mediated neutralization of viruses into the rational development of highly protective antibodies. A related goal is the structure-based design of potent and stable immunogens for vaccination.

The Kopito laboratory seeks a molecular understanding of how cells maintain the fidelity of their proteomes. Unlike DNA, which can be repaired if damaged or incorrectly made, proteins cannot be mended. Instead, damaged or incorrectly synthesized proteins must be rapidly and efficiently destroyed lest they form toxic aggregates.

The goal of our research is to illucidate the signaling mechanisms that regulate plant growth and environmental responses. Plants have remarkable ability to alter growth and development in response to environmental signals. In fact, this ability is essential for their survival in nature as sessile organisms and is also a major target for breeding high-yield crops. My lab has dissected the signaling networks that integrate hormonal (brassinosteroid, auxin, gibberellin), environmental (light, temperature, pathogens), and nutritional (sugar) signals in regulating plant growth.

We study how genetic and environmental factors contribute to biological diversity and adaptation. We are particularly interested in understanding (1) how behavior evolves through changes in brain function and (2) how animal physiology evolves through repurposing existing cellular components.

Our mission is to perform rigorous, ethical, and ecologically relevant science across many areas of organismal biology. We aspire to maintain an environment that fosters creativity, diversity, and inclusion as well as engagement with communities in the areas where we work.

My overarching goal is to understand how cell growth triggers cell division. Linking growth to division is important because it allows cells to maintain a specific size range to best perform their physiological functions. For example, red blood cells must be small enough to flow through small capillaries, whereas macrophages must be large enough to engulf pathogens. In addition to being important for normal cell and tissue physiology, the link between growth and division is misregulated in cancer.