Susan Dutcher

BWF PUP program: Washington University St. Louis "Transdisciplinary training in laboratory and population sciences at Washington University"

Email: dutcher@wustl.edu

Phone: (314)362-2765 (o), (314)805-7550 (c)

Personal/Professional Website

Research interests: The assembly and function of basal bodies/centrioles and cilia using genetics, biochemistry, microscopy, and computational biology in Chlamydomonas as well as human tissue culture cells.

Current Projects: The key questions that we address are how these microtubule-based structures are assembled and how they function and influence cellular biology, development, and human health. Stemming from our comparative genomics work in part, the discovery of many cilia/basal body based diseases has illustrated the incredible breath of roles that these organelles play in human health. Our interest in basal bodies/cilia has led us to use bioinformatics and comparative genomics. We have developed novel algorithms for identifying cilia and basal body/centriole genes. This comparative genomics study provided one of the first parts list for cilia and basal bodies. We identified the BBS5 gene, which is involved in ciliary signaling in a variety of pathways. The conservation of ciliary and centriolar proteins has provided us with a model organism to understand a variety of human diseases that range from polycystic kidney disease, obesity, retinal degeneration, birth defects, and respiratory function (PCD).

System of Study: