Biochemistry graduate student, Jordan Scott, has been awarded a two-year Midwest Affiliate Predoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association, effective July 1, 2012. Fellowships are awarded to students who conduct research broadly related to cardiovascular function and disease and stroke, or related to clinical, basic science, bioengineering or biotechnology, and public health problems.
Her research will study a class of proteins called the Nedd4 E3 ligases, which are essential to cardiovascular development and tissue maintenance. These ligases play a role in the TGFβ signaling that prompts increased fibrotic deposition after heart attacks. These ligases also regulate the clearance of damaged mitochondria in cardiac tissue that has undergone oxidative stress. Additionally, these proteins are mis-regulated in several human cancers.
Scott works in the lab of Robert Stahelin, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine – South Bend, and adjunct assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame.