Ph.D., University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
The studies of Yan's laboratory are on the convergence of genetic and biochemical pathways to maintain the proteostasis in striated muscle and neural tissues. Proteostasis is referred to the biochemical network allowing for cellular proteins to maintain a proper biological activity according to the cell environment. It is mainly controlled by protein quality control (PQC) system. Disruption of PQC system will cause the derailment of cellular protein homeostasis and lead to the occurrence of diseases. The PQC is crucial for cardiac and neural health and requires the collaboration of all its components to be functional. It is composed of three systems including chaperone proteins, the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), and autophagy. We currently focus on elucidating the molecular mechanism of small heart shock protein B7 (HSPB7) at maintaining the proteostasis in cardiac, muscular and neural health and possible therapeutical role at related diseases. At our recent studies, we showed that small heat shock protein B7 is required for maintaining FLNC location and normal function in muscle cells. Loss of HSPB7 causes overexpression and aggregation of FLNC in skeletal muscle. We also found that the expression of FLNC and HSPB7 is tightly associated with each other during muscle regeneration in mouse. In addition, HSPB7 interacts with dimerized FLNC in cell culture system. Put together, we propose the hypothesis that HSPB7 can play a role to facilitate the cell mechanosensor function by stabilizing structure of FLNC to maintain the muscle homeostasis.