Andrew Dillin

Bio

Our lab focuses on the questions of why an aging organism begins to lose control over the integrity of its proteome, and how this loss is communicated across its various tissues. To accomplish this, we have taken the approach of breaking down a cell into its small and canonically-autonomous parts – its suborganelles and subcompartments – such that we can take a larger step back to ask how those smaller portions can communicate both with each other and with the organism as a whole. Our approaches have required us to diversify the systems in which we ask questions: we work on model systems ranging from stem cells and nematodes to mice. We have developed and applied techniques that allow us to manipulate signaling pathways or proteins within a single tissue, cell, or an organelle within a single cell so that we can observe how that small perturbation might reverberate and effect the physiology of the whole of the organism. Our work is fundamentally grounded in the endocrinology and genetics of aging, and our larger goal is to apply our findings towards uncovering new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of age-related pathologies.