Ju Gao
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Dementia affects millions of people and has no cure. Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) causes up to 10% of dementias that start in middle age.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
Biology
- Topics
frontotemporal lobar degeneration
frontotemporal dementia
Alzheimer's disease
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether raising TMEM106B levels, a gene variant linked to dementia risk, impairs mitochondrial shape, membrane potential and respiration and causes damage in cultured cortical neurons.
- Examine how TMEM106B binds the Sigma 1 receptor (SigR1), a regulator of contact sites between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum, and whether this interaction drives mitochondrial dysfunction.
- Determine how TMEM106B affects the function of mitochondria-associated endoplasmic reticulum membranes (MAMs), which control calcium signaling, lipid handling and mitochondrial dynamics.
More about the research
People with certain variants of a gene called TMEM106B have a higher risk of FTLD and of Alzheimer's disease, but how the gene raises that risk is unclear. One clue is mitochondria, the cell's energy producers, which malfunction in many brain-degenerating diseases.
Why it matters
Explaining how a known dementia risk gene disrupts mitochondria could clarify how frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive decline develop. The work could point to new drug targets aimed at restoring mitochondrial function in people with these dementias.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jingjing Liang
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Test how Aggregatin, a protein encoded by the Alzheimer's-linked gene FAM222A, controls TDP-43 clumping and toxicity in neurons, using Aggregatin knockout models.
Ying Xu
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience
Test whether removing PDE2A, an enzyme that breaks down the messengers cAMP and cGMP, from the forebrain protects against pathology and memory deficits, by crossing conditional knockout mice with Alzheimer's transgenic mouse models.
Erin Barnhart
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Compare calcium signals in the cytosol and in the endoplasmic reticulum, the neuron's main calcium store, across defined Drosophila motion vision cell types, using simultaneous in vivo imaging in living flies.
The school
University of Arizona: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 487 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.