Davis Lab

The Davis lab is working to uncover how cells construct and degrade complex molecular machines rapidly and efficiently. The lab applies a variety of biochemical, biophysical, and structural approaches to understand the detailed molecular mechanisms of these processes. Ongoing projects in the lab are focused on autophagy and ribosome biogenesis.

Massive macromolecular complexes are essential in numerous cellular processes, including transcription, translation, splicing, nuclear import/export, metabolism, and degradation. Notably, errors in these assembly and disassembly processes dysregulate cellular homeostasis and have been linked to a variety of diseases.

We are actively working to uncover how these complexes are assembled, disassembled, and degraded, and to learn how environmental stress, mutations, disease, and aging alter the fidelity of these processes. Additionally, we contend that learning the assembly principles of natural macromolecular complexes can guide efforts to build ever larger synthetic molecular machines with applications in metabolic engineering, drug delivery, and materials science.