Post-transcriptional control of gene expression following toxic injury

When a cell is poisoned by a toxic chemical or chemotherapy drug, it doesn't just sit there—it changes which proteins it makes and how fast it makes them. This project studies that rapid, life-or-death reprogramming of protein synthesis. The problem is that we know very little about how cells decide to speed up, slow down, or switch the types of proteins they produce after a toxic injury. The abstract describes ribosomes as "molecular factories" that decode messenger RNA (mRNA) to build proteins, but the rules governing when and how those factories retool in response to harm remain largely unknown. Without that knowledge, we cannot predict why some cells survive a toxic hit while others die, or why certain chemotherapies work in some patients but fail in others. This is fundamental science. The researchers are not developing a drug or a diagnostic today. They are mapping the control system that sits between a cell sensing danger and the cell making the proteins needed to cope. If successful, this work could eventually inform better strategies for protecting healthy tissue during chemotherapy, or for designing toxins that more reliably kill cancer cells. Past discoveries in how cells regulate protein synthesis have already led to drugs that target the ribosome in cancer and infectious disease—this project aims to fill in the missing rules of that same system.