Our group focuses on understanding how a chronic imbalance of chromosomes in the nucleus of human cells affects the homeostasis of proteins and organelles.

Each normal human cell has a pair of 23 chromosomes (22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes) that differ in size and the number of genes they encode. These genes encode proteins that determine cell function. During normal cell division, the chromosomes are duplicated and distributed evenly between two daughter cells. In diseases such as Down's syndrome and cancer, however, there is an imbalance in the number of chromosomes, known as aneuploidy. Down syndrome cells have an extra copy of chromosome 21, and cancer cells have losses and gains in several chromosomes, contributing to pathological consequences.

How this imbalance in chromosome number shapes the proteomic landscape and influences the biogenesis of cellular organelles are our current research questions.