2012 Program Booklet - MCD Biology - University of Colorado Boulder

Peter Jackson, PhD
Staff Scientist: Research Oncology
Genentech
Saturday, October 13
4:00 – 4:45 pm
JSCBB Butcher Auditorium
Research Focus:
My laboratory has worked on the biochemistry of the cell cycle, including DNA replication and
mitosis. Much of our effort has gone toward understanding how proteolytic degradation by
the ubiquitin proteasome system regulates the cell cycle.
We have made key contributions to understanding how proteins that regulate the cell cycle,
called cyclins, accumulate and are destroyed in vertebrate cells and in eggs. A central finding
was our discovery of inhibitors of E3 ubiquitin ligases and their role in cell cycle control. We
have identified several critical factors regulating cyclins and have linked their misregulation to
cancer, proliferative disease and senescence. We continue to define important regulators in
mitosis and in the ubiquitin pathway.
Our recent work has also focused on signaling through the primary cilium. The primary cilium
is an organelle with critical roles in signaling in tissues including the retina, nervous system,
kidney and sensory organs. The importance of the cilia in signaling was only recently
appreciated, but this structure organizes a still unknown number of receptor systems. These
pathways are genetically linked to important degenerative diseases including renal cystic
disease, obesity, diabetes, retinopathies and cancer signaling. We have used proteomic
approaches to define regulatory networks linked to proteins that are defective in human
diseases called ciliopathies. We are looking for critical receptor classes linked to these diseases
and evaluating the therapeutic opportunities presented by these receptors