Karras Laboratory

Genetic mutations underlie the inheritance of phenotypic traits in health and disease. Yet, mutations often produce very different phenotypes depending on the genetic and environmental contexts in which they emerge. The challenge is that there are too many relevant gene-environment interactions to characterize by classical approaches, which poses a serious barrier to advancing precision medicine. Our work aims at contributing to lifting this barrier by harnessing the homeostatic processes that keep aging cells healthy. To this end, we have focused on two tractable hallmarks of longevity, PROTEIN HOMEOSTASIS and GENOME INTEGRITY, and the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that compromise them in congenital disease and cancer.