Lab News
2024
January
Graduate student Cristian Ricaurte Perez is awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association! He is the first student to ever be awarded this prestigious fellowship for the LSU College of Science. Congrats Cristian! See the press release here.
2023
August
New Publication out in Nature Aging! Tubular lysosome induction couples animal starvation to healthy aging. In this manuscript, we report that a change to lysosome morphology, from vesicular to tubular form, supports lifespan extension upon dietary restriction and promotes heightened autophagy and healthy aging when stimulated artifically in well-fed animals. This article was also featured in a "News and Views" article: Lysosomal alteration links food limitation to longevity. Congrats to co-first authors Tatiana Villalobos (undergraduate), Bhaswati Ghosh (graduate students), Katie Rose DeLeo (RA), Sanaa Alam (undergraduate), and all the others that contributed to this work!
May
Undergraduate Greg Juge is awarded an LSU Discover research grant to fund his summer research. Congrats Greg!
Undergraduate Christy Nguyen defends her honors thesis and receives a Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award!
April
Graduate student Pritika Pandey wins first place for best poster at the LSU Annual BioGrads Symposium!
March
PhD student Ankita Basu successfully defends her thesis! Congrats Ankita!
2022
August
New PhD student Jocelyn Wood joins the lab. Welcome Jocelyn!
June
New publication out in the Journal of Experimental Biology: Reproductive tradeoffs govern sexually dimorphic tubular lysosome induction in Caenorhabditis elegans. In this manuscript, undergraduate Cara Ramos demonstrates that tubular lysosomes are induced constitutively in young male worms as a result of a self-imposed dietary restiction that permits them to spend more time exploring for a mate than eating. She further demonstrates that feminized worms induce tubular lysosomes upon mating to support the high energy costs of reproduction. Her manuscript was selected as an "inside JEB" featured article: Different tubular lysosome strategies of male and hermaphrodite C. elegans. Great work Cara!
May
New review on tubular lysosomes published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology: Branching Off: New Insight Into Lysosomes as Tubular Organelles. This review was published as part of the research collection "Dynamic Organelle networks".
Undergraduate Cara Ramos recieves the Biological Sciences undergraduate research award! Congrats Cara!
Undergraduate Sanaa Alam receives a Fulbright award to teach abroad in Spain! See the press release here.
2021
December
New publication out in Autophagy: Degradative tubular lysosomes links pexophagy to starvation and early aging in C. elegans. In collaboration with the Bohnert lab, we show that bulk autophagic degradation of peroxisome occurs at tubular lysosomes as a part of natural aging. Further, inhibition of peroxisomal genes that regulate age-dependent peroxisome loss alters animal lifespan. Collectively, these findings reveal new facets of peroxisome homeostasis relevant to aging.
July
New publication out in Disease Models and Mechanisms: "CRISPR/Cas-9-engineered Drosophila knock-in models to study VCP diseases". Using CRISPR gene editing, we generated Drosophila knock-in mutants that include nine hereditary VCP disease mutations. Our models display many hallmarks of VCP-mediated degeneration, including progressive decline in mobility, protein aggregate accumulation and defects in lysosomal and mitochondrial function. We also made some novel and unexpected findings, including nuclear morphology defects and sex-specific phenotypic differences in several mutants. First first-author paper for undergraduate Jordan Wall and graduate student Ankita Basu!
June
Sanaa Alam recieves an LSU Discover Undergraduate Research grant to fund her summer research. Congrats Sanaa!
January
New publication out in Nature Communications! "SVIP is a molecular determinant of lysosomal dynamic stability, neurodegeneration and lifespan". We demonstrated that a small adaptor protein, SVIP, recruits VCP to tubular lysosomes in Drosophila muscles, which provides neuroprotective effects and promotes animal longevity. We further link SVIP defects to VCP-related diseases and identify a novel human patient mutation in SVIP that is pathogenic when over-expressed in flies. Former LSU undergraduate, Logan Primeaux, contributed as a co-author!
2020
December
Corey Cooper and Jordan Wall graduate from LSU and receive Distinguished Undergraduate Research Awards
August
The Johnson lab receives a 5-year R35 MIRA (Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award) from NIH-NIGMS to study "Tubular lysosomes in health and disease".
June
Jordan Wall receives an LSU Discover Undergraduate Research award! Congrats Jordan!
May
Stephen Lopez graduates from LSU and receives a Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award
January
The Johnson and Bohnert labs receive a collaborative biomedical grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to study the biology of tubular lysosomes. See the press release here.
2019
December
Rebecca Krueger graduates from LSU and receives a Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award
May
Rebecca and Hayden receive LSU Discover Grants to fund their summer research.
April
Stephen won 1st place in the visual display category at LSU Discover Day for his demonstration of "light-induced sleep flies and research on how a human short sleep mutant offsets negative effects of sleep deprivation". Congrats Stephen!
2018
September
Stephen receives an LSU Discover award to fund his research this fall.
August
The Johnson lab receives an R00 grant from NIH-NINDS to study “Mechanisms of VCP-mediated degeneration”.
May
Lab renovations are complete!