Lila M. Gierasch

Her research lies in experimental studies of protein folding, in vitro and in vivo. Her early work studied critical relationships between the sequence and functional conformations of peptides and proteins, using peptides to examine functional protein interactions. Recently, she developed tools for studying protein folding in the cell, used NMR to explain the mechanism of allostery in Hsp70 molecular chaperones, and synthesized a vast array of in vitro data into a computational model for cellular protein homeostasis. Her work provides fundamental insights into the pathological consequences of protein misfolding in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's.