Email: kstuart@u.washington.edu
The Stuart lab investigates aspects of the molecular biology of protozoan pathogens with the intent of elucidating fundamental molecular processes and to identify drug target s, vaccine candidates and biomarkers for diagnostics. Most studies are focused on African trypanosomes that cause lethal human disease and Leishmania that cause mild to lethal diseases. One program focuses on RNA editing, a type of RNA processing that is unique to these organisms and hence presents several promising drug targets. It is characterizing the process of editing and the multicomponent ribonucleoprotein complex that catalyzes this process. It is studying regulation of RNA editing during development , the protein products of edited mRNAs, and the physiological consequences of editing. This progam entails a wide variety of experimental approaches including genetics, molecular biology and biochemisty, immunochemistry and mass spectrometry. A second program area is characterizing the mitochondrial proteome of T. brucei. It is identifying all the mitochondrial proteins (~1,000), their suborganellar location, their associations in complexes and changes during the life cycle. The intent is to identify the functions of these proteins and the functional networks. This program will also incidently identify numerous non-mitochondrial and changes during the life cycle and the related proteins in other trypanosomatids as a consequence of the genome projects that we completed Leishmania , Trypanosoma cruzi, and T. brucei within a global consortium. The proteome project entails extensive cell biology, mass spectrometry, bioinformatic techniques. Several of the studies entail international collaboration.