van Oosten-Hawle Lab 

All cells within an organism are exposed to environmental or physiological challenges that can damage proteins, the building blocks of cellular life. To ensure cellular health and stress survival, cells have established protective stress response mechanisms that are rapidly activated. This is why, some organisms can withstand extreme heat or high salt concentrations.  

However, as we age, the efficiency of these protective mechanisms decline or even collapse completely. This slowly destroys the functionality of proteins leading to protein mis-folding and aggregation that give rise to age-associated diseases.

Our lab aims to understand how these protective stress response mechanisms are regulated at an organismal level and how we can specifically target them to retain their cell protective activity for longer.