Contact Us
Dr. Scott Erdman
Associate Professor
seerdman@syr.edu
Office: LSC 110
Phone: 315.443.3748
Undergraduate students working on research projects in my lab
Steve Bowen – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Steve is working with Nancy and using the yeast two-hybrid system to help identify proteins involved in the localization and function of Pxl1p. He also has his own project studying a novel and essential gene in yeast that appears to also be present and conserved in most, if not all other eukaryotes.
Lisa Knapp – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Lisa is also focusing on studies of Pxl1p localization and its role in Rho1 GTPase mediated signaling. She is employing a set of strains carrying deletions of different Rho1 pathway regulators, effectors and downstream targets and a reporter gene construct to assess how pathway signaling is altered when different regulators are missing or inactivated due to mutation. She is also working with Steve to screen a collection of deletion strains representing approximately 90 different genes functioning in cell polarity for strains that fail to localize a GFP-Pxl1 fusion protein.
Faraz Mamaghani – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Faraz is exploring the use of membrane disturbing drugs and compounds as a means of further understanding cell signaling and differentiation events during yeast mating and filamentous growth.
Anthony Paredes – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Anthony is working on mapping domains of the Dse3 protein responsible for its localization to cytokinesis sites in yeast cells.
Jamie Robinson – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jamie is working on understanding how the Pxl1 protein localizes to specific polarized growth sites through its interactions with other polarized proteins.
Philip Wagshal – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Phil is GFP and epitope tagging a novel PDR pathway target gene to help determine it’s cellular functions.
Aaron Yang – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Aaron is an Honors thesis student whose work is focused on identifying functions of a family of proteins in yeast that are similar to synaptotagmins present in higher eukaryotic genomes. Deletion of at least one of these genes from the yeast genome appears to lead to resistance of cells to triterpene glycoside growth effects. Synaptotagmins are proteins that contain well-conserved C2 domains that bind calcium and affect membrane dynamics during vesicle trafficking. Aaron is also working with Guohong to further examine the roles played by different yeast protein mannosyl transferases in the posttranslational modification of specific domains present in yeast adhesins.
Former Students
Gary Franke – Ph.D. 2013