Chenshu Liu
Lehigh University, PA·Genetics
Eggs and sperm must carry exactly half of a parent's chromosomes. They get this through meiosis, a special cell division in which each matching pair of chromosomes, one from each parent, lines up and then separates.
- Fields
Genetics
Biology
Biochemistry
- Topics
meiosis
oocyte
synapsis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Determine how the force-sensing ion channel Piezo works at the oocyte nuclear envelope to relay a signal that triggers cell death after synapsis fails in the C. elegans germline.
- Examine how the enzyme PLK-2 and other signaling pathways are coordinated at the nuclear envelope to regulate oocyte development, using genetics, cell biology and chemically induced proximity tools.
- Compare nuclear-envelope-based meiotic quality control in Pristionchus pacificus, a nematode with more mammal-like meiosis, with that in C. elegans, to find conserved and divergent features.
More about the research
To line up properly, the chromosome pairs are zipped together by a protein structure called the synaptonemal complex, a process called synapsis. When synapsis fails, chromosomes can be divided unevenly. This produces aneuploidy, an abnormal chromosome number and a major cause of birth defects such as Down syndrome. Many organisms protect themselves by killing faulty meiotic cells through programmed cell death (apoptosis). How cells detect the failure and trigger this response is still unclear.
Why it matters
Errors in meiosis that give eggs the wrong chromosome number are leading causes of infertility, pregnancy loss and birth defects. Because PIEZO2 is enriched in human egg-containing follicles, this work could reveal conserved quality-control steps relevant to the age-related decline in egg quality. It may also shed light on nuclear envelope problems linked to cancer and laminopathies, diseases of the nuclear lamina.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anne M Villeneuve
Stanford University, CA·Genetics
Uncover the mechanisms that ensure every chromosome pair forms a crossover, an exchange that links matching chromosomes so they separate correctly, in C. elegans meiosis.
Diana Libuda
University of Oregon, OR·Genetics
Test how specific meiotic chromosome structures regulate and respond to repair pathway and partner choice, using in vivo assays in C. elegans that directly detect use of the sister chromatid as a repair template during prophase I.
Amy MacQueen
Wesleyan University, CT·Genetics
Define how the N terminus of Zip1, a synaptonemal complex building block, works with the Zip3 SUMO ligase to promote crossover recombination in budding yeast, using structure-function genetic analysis.
The school
Lehigh University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $62M a year on research, 99 research doctorates a year.
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