The Gowrishankar Lab at UIC
We are sponsoring Dr. Swetha Gowrishankar Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at The College of Medicine at The University of Illinois Chicago. Her initiative is focused on evaluating efficacy of candidate compounds for rescuing lysosome defects in MAPK8ip3 KO iNeurons. The Gowrishankar Lab investigates the cellular changes in neurons resulting from loss of JIP3/MAPK8IP3 as well as de novo MAPK8IP3 mutations. Using human iPSC derived neurons as well as mouse models the Lab examines how organelle distribution (lysosomes, mitochondria and Golgi), axon specification and development are altered under these conditions. The results thus far have led the Gowrishankar Lab to focus on how MAPK8IP3 mutations alter neuronal polarity including axon initial segment integrity. Using an unboased approach of compartment-specific proteomics that was recently validated on the lab’s KO model, the Gowrishankar Lab intends to identify unanticipated changes in axons of the mutant cultured neurons. The lab uses the mouse models to determine physiological consequences of the mutations starting with health and survival. The Gowrishankar Lab will extend the results from cultured neurons to the mouse model to determine if there is cell type specificity as well as age-specific effects to the cellular changes arising from the MAPK8IP3 mutations. Lastly, the Gowrishankar Lab will examine the physiological consequences arising from cellular changes that have been observed.
About Dr Gowrishankar
Swetha Gowrishankar, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She is a Faculty Fellow of the Honors College and Faculty of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, UIC. She has over twenty years of experience investigating lysosome biology which includes her post-doctoral work studying axonal lysosome transport in the laboratories of Shawn Ferguson and HHMI Investigator Pietro De Camilli at Yale School of Medicine. At UIC, her lab studies mechanisms underlying lysosome formation and function in neurons as well as mechanisms underlying lysosome dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. She addresses these questions using a multidisciplinary approach (imaging, biochemical techniques and proteomics) in mouse models of these diseases as well as iPSC-derived neurons