Park's Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder:
We study the proteasome, a central mediator of protein breakdown. Functions and mechanisms of the proteasome are extremely conserved in eukaryotes, allowing our research findings to be broadly applicable to many organismal contexts, from a simple model as budding yeasts to a more complex, human stem cells, for example. A major research question in Park lab is to understand how the proteasome, a complex molecular machine, assembles via multiple dedicated chaperone proteins. How do these chaperones enable proteasome assembly accurately and efficiently? How do they 'know' faulty vs. correct complexes, and act on them properly? Cell's ability to supply the proteasome is essential to life, and survival through many stressed conditions, including "nutritional stresses". In particular, cancer cells frequently encounter nutritional stresses, and many of them alter expressions of  proteasome assembly chaperones. For more detailed description of our current projects, please see Research section of our website.