Ohio State nav bar

NIGMS MIRA award to Dave Somers

April 9, 2020

NIGMS MIRA award to Dave Somers

David Somers

Congratulations to Dave Somers, whose lab was awarded a MIRA grant from the National Institutes of Health. This award titled "Inter- and intracellular mechanisms of circadian regulation" will seek to understand the functional relationships among the inter- and intracellular processes that keep the circadian oscillator running and coordinated across an organism. The lab is using genetic, genomic, biochemical and cell biological tools and strategies in the model plant Arabidopsis to identify the molecules and mechanisms that regulate the transport of clock proteins between the cytosol and nucleus. They are focused in part on how post-translational modifications of clock proteins affect both their positional and temporal intracellular localization, including gatekeeping features of the intracellular environment, and are using single cell imaging techniques to assess features of clock protein movement and turnover. Long-distance circadian signaling from shoot to root will also be explored, along with unbiased mutant screens to identify proteolytic factors controlling clock protein levels that will help understand the importance of precise time-of-day phasing of these factors.