News

22 September 2023
Five Stowers postdoctoral researchers awarded grants in 2023
Five postdoctoral researchers from four labs received prestigious awards to enhance their research and training.
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We seek to understand aging, the inexorable decline in cellular and bodily function that results from the unidirectional nature of self-assembly by supersaturated proteins.
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Molecular and Cell Biology, Development and Regeneration, Evolutionary Biology, Systems Biology
Human cell lines, Yeast, Mice
The Halfmann Lab uses genetic, biochemical, and biophysical approaches to better understand the processes that cause certain proteins like prions to aggregate, or cluster together. Historically, prions have had a bad reputation and have been implicated in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. However, the lab’s research has discovered that prions are also important for normal cellular processes including immune responses that fight off viruses.
Halfmann’s work has done much to deepen our understanding of prions, illustrating that they can allow yeast cells to coordinate their metabolism and cooperate like more complex organisms. The lab has demonstrated that prions function as part of innate immune responses in humans.
At the heart of the Halfmann Lab's research is the metastable state of molecules called supersaturation, where a solution exceeds its normal limit of concentration for those molecules.
The Halfmann Lab uses cutting-edge microscopy and flow cytometry technology to look inside living cells and “see” what happens when supersaturated proteins transition from a liquid to a solid state. Their mission is to understand how these phase transitions are regulated in cells and how this form of signaling is involved in various healthy and disease-causing processes including inflammation and aging.
Principal Investigator
Associate Investigator
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Randal Halfmann, Ph.D., is an Associate Investigator at the Stowers Institute focusing on the biophysics of protein self-assembly. Halfmann joined the Institute in 2015 as an Assistant Investigator.
Randal Halfmann, Ph.D., is an Associate Investigator at the Stowers Institute focusing on the biophysics of protein self-assembly. Halfmann joined the Institute in 2015 as an Assistant Investigator.
The central tenet of our research holds that nucleation barriers render living proteomes perpetually high energy, or supersaturated, with respect to ordered protein assemblies such as amyloids, and this provides a driving force for inevitable and irreversible declines in cellular phenotypic potential.
News
22 September 2023
Five postdoctoral researchers from four labs received prestigious awards to enhance their research and training.
Read Article
In The News
13 July 2023
From KCTV5, Science is all around us and yet much of how the world works remains a mystery. Dr. Randall Hoffman, an investigator with the Stowers Institute, and Kate Biberdorf the host of the new podcast “Seeking a Scientist” join the show to talk about the importance of science and “Kate the Chemists’” big social media following.
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In The News
10 July 2023
From KSHB, Scientists at the Stowers Institute are trying to understand neurological diseases because they know the toll it takes on families. Now, they've made a major breakthrough.
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A nucleation barrier spring-loads the CBM signalosome for binary activation
Rodriguez Gama A, Miller T, Lange JJ, Unruh JR, Halfmann R. eLife. 2022;11:e79826. doi: 10.7554/eLife.79826.
Quantifying nucleation in vivo reveals the physical basis of prion-like phase behavior
Khan T, Kandola TS, Wu J, Venkatesan S, Ketter E, Lange JJ, Rodriguez Gama A, Box A, Unruh JR, Cook M, Halfmann R. Mol Cell. 2018;71:155-168.e157.
Zhang XF, Sun R, Guo Q, Zhang S, Meulia T, Halfmann R, Li D, Qu F. PLoS Pathog. 2017;13:e1006253. doi: 1006210.1001371/journal.ppat.1006253.
The polyglutamine amyloid nucleus in living cells is a monomer with competing dimensions of order
Kandola T, Venkatesan S, Zhang J, Lerbakken B, Blanck JF, Wu J, Unruh J, Berry P, Lange LL, Von Schulze A, Box A, Cook M, Sagui C, Halfmann R. Preprint. bioRxiv 2021;458132; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.29.458132.
Cai X, Chen J, Xu H, Liu S, Jiang QX, Halfmann R, Chen ZJ. Cell. 2014;156:1207-1222.
Heritable remodeling of yeast multicellularity by an environmentally responsive prion
Holmes DL, Lancaster AK, Lindquist S, Halfmann R. Cell. 2013;153:153-165.