Guest Editors
Natasha Kirienko
Rice University, BioSciences Department
Dr. Natasha Kirienko is an Associate Professor at Rice University. Her research focuses on the broad biochemical importance of mitochondria, whose dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a key contributor in a wide variety of diseases and may be a crucial determinant of aging. Dr. Kirienko’s research is devoted to three broad, interrelated questions: 1) How are mitochondria involved in host-microbe relationships? 2) How are mitochondria surveilled? 3) How can mitochondrial homeostasis be leveraged to treat disease? Dr. Kirienko received her PhD at the University of Wyoming where she used Caenorhabditis elegans as model for cancer and stress response research. During her postdoc at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Dr. Kirienko continued working with C. elegans, using it as a tool to study host-pathogen interactions and high-throughput screening for drug discovery.
Hyun-Eui Kim
McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology
Dr. Hyun-Eui Kim is an Assistant Professor at UTHealth Houston. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanism and role of cross-compartmental communication between stress responses on the metabolic state of cells during aging and pathological conditions. Dr. Kim received her PhD at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas for studies on biochemical analysis of apoptosome formation process and got her post-doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and UC Berkeley studying mitochondrial stress response during aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
Collection Overview
Model organisms (for example, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, Danio rerio, rodents, etc.) are invaluable resources for studying cellular stress, health, and aging. Recent advances have provided leaps forward in the tools available for interrogating organelle health, dynamics, and interactions. These tools include, but are not limited to, biochemical and imaging analyses, deep-sequencing approaches for genomics and transcriptomics, flow cytometry, and proteomic approaches to measure the functions, physiology, dynamics, and interactions within and between organelles.
For example, super-resolution microscopy of live animals and transmission electron microscopy are used to study organelle dynamics. Subcellular fractionation and subsequent biochemical analyses of organelle membrane populations, including rapid organelle isolation tools facilitate physiological and biochemical studies. And modern proteomic tools using quantitative mass spectrometry, such as metabolic isotope labeling techniques and label-free approaches, allow many aspects of organelle function to be investigated at depths that were unimaginable a decade or two ago.
Unfortunately, many of these tools are sensitive and difficult to master when reading written protocols alone, especially with the truncation and shortening of Methods sections. For this reason, many researchers would greatly benefit from step-by-step visual protocols and specific descriptions of key protocol steps, equipment, or reagents. To this end, we aim for this Methods Collection to focus on the broad applications of studying organellar health, dynamics, and interactions.
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