Proteostatis: guarding the proteome in health and disease

The control of cellular protein homeostasis, also called Proteostasis, is emerging as the central cellular process controlling the stability, function and quality control of the proteome and central to our understanding of a vast range of diseases. The proteostasis machinery maintains the function of destabilized and mutant proteins; assists the degradation of damaged and aggregated proteins and monitors the health of the proteome, adjusting it in response to environmental or metabolic stresses. This class will introduce students to the exciting cutting edge discoveries in this field, and will relate them to medical and biotechnology applications, as well as how a better understanding of proteostasis can be leveraged to understand fundamental biological processes, such as evolution and aging and to ameliorate a wide range of diseases. Given the increasingly close links between aging, protein misfolding, and neurodegenerative disease, understanding proteostasis networksis of critical fundamental and practical importance. These insights are particularly relevant in view of the increased prevalence of late-onset neurodegenerative aggregation diseases caused by an increasingly elderly population.