The goal of our research is to identify the regulatory proteins that control vesicle transport in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in order to understand how underlying defects in protein and lipid trafficking contribute to human disease.

Vesicle transport is required to switch off signaling receptors that would otherwise promote unregulated cell growth and cancer. Identifying the factors that regulate the intracellular sorting of lipids such as cholesterol is a first step in the development of new treatments for diseases such as atherosclerosis. Because vesicle transport processes are highly conserved, they can be studied in a very simple organism, and the findings applied directly to the study of human cells. Yeast genetics is therefore a powerful tool for the discovery of fundamental cellular mechanisms relevant to human health.