Christensen Lab

Filamentous fungi are, in some ways, ideal models for human cell transport as they appear to use much of the same transport machinery. However, in filamentous fungi, cellular cargos are often distributed consistently throughout a hyphal network, whereas cargo transport in human cells must be multi-dimensional, comprehensive, and responsive. Correspondingly, human cells have evolved a large series of functionally distinct motors and adaptors. How do these motors and adaptors differ across kingdoms? Are human motors and adaptors ‘variations on a theme’ seen in fungi, or do they perform completely novel cellular roles? Our lab uses filamentous fungi as models to investigate general roles and mechanisms of transport-related proteins, and then uses cellular proteomics and human cell biology to discover how those processes have diverged, expanded, or differ completely in human cells.

We have also become interested in how intracellular transport processes are disrupted upon disease states. Aspergillus nidulans is a filamentous fungus whose transport machinery is well-conserved with humans. We use Aspergillus nidulans for high-throughput screening of variants present in neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. We can then identify the range of cellular outcomes for these disorders and how transport processes are impacted.