Michael Lee
Education
PhD 2008, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Pharmacology
BS 2002, University of Washington, Department of Biology
BS 2002, University of Washington, Department of Psychology
Research
A mainstay in the treatment of all cancers is the use of DNA damaging chemotherapy, which affects both normal and cancerous cells. Our current understanding is that the DNA damage signaling network functions in a nonlinear fashion and is highly interconnected with signals from other pro-growth and pro-death stimuli, making it difficult to predict how a particular cancer will respond to a given treatment. Furthermore, in response to DNA damaging agents, tumor cell death may involve apoptosis, necrosis (or necroptosis), or autophagy, but we lack a refined understanding of how these death mechanisms are integrated, and how they are regulated by the DNA damage response. Our goal is to study the DNA damage response and the resulting phenotypic landscape at the systems level, using a variety of established data-driven computational models and high-throughput methods for data collection. We are particularly interested in modeling DNA damage-based combination therapies for breast cancers, particularly those of the “triple-negative subtype,” because cancers of this subtype are generally associated with poorer prognoses and do not respond to any currently available targeted therapy. Our analysis will focus broadly on the many signaling pathways and death mechanisms that comprise the DNA damage response network.
Publications
Torres, M.P.*, M.J. Lee*, F. Ding, C. Purbeck, B. Kuhlman, N.V. Dokholyan, and H.G Dohlman. (2009) G protein mono-ubiquitination by the Rsp5 ubiquitin ligase. J Biol Chem. 13: 8940-50.
* Authors contributed equally to this work
Lee, M.J. and H.G. Dohlman. (2008) Co-Activation of G protein Signaling by Cell-Surface Receptors and an Intracellular Exchange-Factor. Current Biology. 18, 211-215.
Wang, Y., L.A. Marotti, M.J. Lee, and H.G. Dohlman. (2005) Differential regulation of G protein alpha subunit trafficking by mono- and poly-ubiquitination. J Biol Chem. 280, 284-291.
Collaborators
Albert Ye, Gavin MacBeath
