Mentor: Jeremy Baskin

Education:

University of California, Berkeley – B.S., Chemical Biology (2019)

Awards and Honors

• Cornell Graduate Fellow

Research Experience:

• Randy Schekman Lab, UC Berkeley (2019-2020)
• Jen-Chywan Wang Lab, UC Berkeley (2018-2019)

Current Research Activities:

Phosphatidic acid (PA) is a tightly regulated, low abundant second messenger phospholipid that  controls cytoskeleton rearrangements, vesicle trafficking, and cellular growth and can be biosynthesized through the phospholipase D (PLD)-catalyzed hydrolysis of phosphatidylcholine (PC). Dysregulation of PLD activity and PA production has been implicated in the pathology of many cancers, autoimmunity, and neurodegenerative diseases. Many aspects of PLD/PA signaling remain to be studied, such as the regulation of the localization and activity of PLDs in response to different stimuli. Delineating the regulation mechanism of PLD/PA signaling pathways and identifying its regulators will be valuable to unraveling the pathology of these diseases. I aim to use the Imaging Phospholipase D Activity with Clickable Alcohols via Transphosphatidylation (IMPACT) labeling method developed by the Baskin Lab, combined with genome-wide CRISPR screening to discover new regulators of PLD signaling.