Darci Trader

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

The Trader lab is focused on understanding the role of the proteasome in a variety of disease states. We are actively recruiting students for two projects. The first involves studying the role of the immunoproteasome, whose activity is essential for generating antigenic peptides. We wish to study how we can harness the activity of the immunoproteasome to elicit a desired immune system response. Students will utilize a variety of molecular biology techniques, flow cytometry, and confocal microscopy to study the immunoproteasome. The second project we are recruiting students for is to study how increasing the rate of proteasome activity can have a positive effect on a variety of protein accumulation diseases including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and premature aging. Students will use new molecules discovered in our lab in a variety of cell types to analyze the ability of the proteasome to degrade accumulated toxic proteins. Students will have the opportunity to learn confocal microscopy, advanced molecular biology techniques, and basic drug stability assays.

Selected Publications:

Zerfas, B.L.; Coleman, R.A.; Salazar-Chaprro, A.; Macatangay, N.J.; Trader, D.J. Fluorescent Probes with Unnatural Amino Acids to Monitor Proteasome Activity in Real-Time, ACS Chem. Biol. 2020, 15, 2588-2596. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acschembio.0c00634 

Tian, W.; Trader, D.J. Discovery of a Small Molecule Probe of Rpn-6, an Essential Subunit of the 26S Proteasome, ACS Chemical Biology, 2020, 15 (2), 554-561. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acschembio.9b01019 

Coleman, R.A.; Mohallem, R.; Aryal, U.K.; Trader, D.J. Protein Degradation Profile Reveals Dynamic Nature of 20S CP Small Molecule Stimulation, RSC Chem. Biol., 2021, In Press, https://doi.org/10.1039/D0CB00191K 

Zerfas, B.L.; Trader, D.J. Monitoring the Immunoproteasome in Live Cells Using an Activity-Based Peptide-Peptoid Hybrid Probe. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, 141 (13), 5252-5260. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.8b12873