The Gage Protein Chemistry Lab
Research in the Gage lab focuses on understanding the relationship between the structure of a protein and it’s function. The main focus of our lab is understanding the function of the titin protein, which regulates passive tension in muscle fibers and recently has been shown to contribute to active force as well. Our lab uses a wide range of techniques from biophysical techniques like circular dichroism, fluorescence and magnetic tweezers to genetic approaches like RNA-Seq to understand titin function under a variety of physiological conditions. We are interested in developing an improved understanding of the relationship between function of titin and other muscle proteins and diet, aging and stretch-induced damage as well as other factors.