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Home > Research Leaders > H to M > Ramanujan Hegde
Manu Hegde cb

Ramanujan Hegde

Membrane protein biosynthesis and quality control


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Cells are highly compartmentalized into numerous membrane-bound organelles. The membranes that define each organelle contain unique sets of embedded proteins that impart distinct functionalities to that organelle. How are all these different proteins selectively targeted to their correct destinations? And once they get there, how are membrane proteins inserted, folded, and assembled properly into the lipid bilayer? Defining the various pathways for membrane protein biosynthesis and understanding this machinery in molecular detail are major goals for our group.

Despite sophisticated biosynthetic pathways, sometimes things go wrong. What does the cell do when protein sorting, insertion, or folding fails? We are finding that failure is surprisingly common, and that the biosynthetic machinery is intricately linked to degradation pathways to help eliminate such mistakes. The importance of scrupulous quality control is dramatically illustrated by the consequences that result from its failure: protein aggregation, cellular dysfunction, and disease. We anticipate that our mechanistic studies of biosynthetic and quality control pathways will shed light on both a fundamental cell biological problem and the molecular basis of various diseases.

Selected Papers

  • Zavodszky, E., Peak-Chew, S.Y., Juszkiewicz, S., Narvaez, A. J. and Hegde, R.S. (2021)
    Identification of a quality control factor that monitors failures during proteasome assembly.
    Science 373: 998-1004.
  • Chitwood, P.J. and Hegde, R.S (2020)
    An intramembrane chaperone complex facilitates membrane protein biogenesis.
    Nature 584: 630-634.
  • Lin, Z., Gasic, I., Chandrasekaran, V., Peters, N., Shao, S., Mitchison, T.J., and Hegde, R.S. (2020)
    TTC5 mediates autoregulation of tubulins via mRNA degradation.
    Science 367: 100-104.
  • Guna, A., Volkmar, N., Christianson, J.C. and Hegde, R.S. (2018)
    The ER membrane protein complex is a transmembrane domain insertase
    Science 359(6374): 470-473
  • Yanagitani, K., Juszkiewicz, S., and Hegde, R.S. (2017)
    UBE2O is a quality control factor for orphans of multi-protein complexes
    Science 357: 472-475.
  • Shao, S., Rodrigo-Brenni, M.C., Kivlen, M.H., and Hegde, R.S. (2017)
    Mechanistic basis for a molecular triage reaction
    Science 355(6322): 298-302.
  • Voorhees, R. and Hegde, R. S. (2016)
    Structure of the Sec61 channel opened by a signal sequence.
    Science 351: 88-91.

    Complete list of papers from the Hegde group

Group Members

  • Sara Carrillo Roas
  • Markus Hoepfler
  • Ryan Judy
  • Aaron Lewis
  • Luka Smalinskaite
  • Huping Wang
  • Haoxi Wu
  • Yuichi Yagita
  • Eszter Zavodszky

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