Zhihao Wu

Lab: DLSB 217
Tel: 214 768-1660

Research Interests

Neuroscience and Gene Regulation

The long-term goal of our research is to uncover the fundamental mechanism of age-related neurological diseases. Our current focus is to investigate the role of cellular quality control systems in the pathogenesis of these disorders. We try to link ribosome-associated translation quality control, macromolecule quality control, and organelle (mitochondrial) quality control into a continuum of the cellular quality control system. It will enhance our understanding of proteostasis failure induced by aberrant translation products in mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. Our mission also includes identifying the potential novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in the process of investigating the perturbation of QC factors in the disease conditions. Our lab primarily uses fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as the experimental system, because of the availability of sophisticated genetic tools, and also various mammalian systems to test the conservation of the players and principles we uncover from the Drosophila studies.

Selected Publications

Professional webpage and publications