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| Name |
Goldstein, Lawrence S. |
| Location
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University of California, San Diego |
| Primary Field
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Cellular and Developmental Biology |
| Secondary Field
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Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience |
 Election Citation
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Goldstein's research of Alzheimer's disease provided revelations about kinesin molecular motor protein structure and function, blocked neuron movement pathways, and cholesterol control pathways. |
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Research Interests
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Lawrence S.B. Goldstein's laboratory is interested in the roles that cholesterol and molecular movement pathways play in the development of Alzheimers Disease (AD). Early work on kinesin molecular motor protein structure and function led to the discovery that eukaryotic genomes encode multiple members of a kinesin superfamily characterized by "shared" motor domains conserved in evolution. These conserved motor domains are attached to a diversity of tail domains that play an important role in specifying distinct molecular movement functions. Work in Drosophila neurons and in the mouse led to the realization that blockage of movement pathways in neurons may play an important role in a variety of diseases including neurodegenerative diseases such as AD. This work led directly to the realization that further dissection of the movement pathways that play a role in AD would require experiments in human neurons, which have many distinct aspects of biochemistry not found in other organisms. Analysis of human neurons made from human induced pluripotent stem cells with AD genomes or AD mutations revealed that molecular movement and cholesterol control pathways are upstream of late AD phenotypes. |
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