Post-doctoral Fellow
Research
I received my bachelor’s degree in biology from Caltech, after which I worked as a research associate at the biotech startup Arbor Vita Corporation in Fremont, CA. I then returned to academia to earn my Ph.D. in biology at MIT. During my graduate work in Bob Horvitz’s lab, I studied how the hypoxia-response pathway regulates behavior and stress physiology of C. elegans. I discovered that a novel signaling pathway, consisting of a previously uncharacterized cytochrome P450 enzyme and nuclear receptor, functions downstream of the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF to control numerous aspects of HIF-regulated biology. In the Dillin lab, I am studying the role of intercellular communication in maintaining protein homeostasis during healthy aging and disease states, with the goal of identifying molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying such non-autonomous regulation.
Publications
Ma, D.K., Rothe, M., Zheng, S., Bhatla, N., Pender, C.L., Menzel, R., & Horvitz, H.R. Cytochrome P450 drives a HIF-regulated behavioral response to reoxygenation by C. elegans. Science 341.6145 (2013): 554-558.
Paquin, N., Murata, Y., Froehlich, A., Omura, D.T., Ailion, M., Pender, C.L., Constantine-Paton, M., & Horvitz, H.R. The conserved VPS-50 protein functions in dense-core vesicle maturation and acidification and controls animal behavior. Current Biology 26.7 (2016): 862-871.