Heitman Lab Members

Eanas Aboobakar Undergraduate Student 320 CARL Building Box 3546 DUMC Durham, N.C. 27710 Phone: 919.684.3036 Fax: 919.684.5458 Email: efa3@duke.edu

I am currently an undergraduate student at Duke University in the class of 2011. I began my work in Dr. Heitman’s lab in September 2008 under the guidance of Dr. Lukasz Kozubowski. My research project has focused on examining the roles of the calcineurin signaling pathway and the phospholipid-binding protein Cts1 in the virulence of the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans.

Calcineurin is an evolutionarily conserved Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent serine/threonine protein phosphatase that has been found to play a key role in high temperature growth, cell wall organization, and mating in Cryptococcus neoformans. While it is known that calcineurin plays a critical role in C. neoformans virulence, much remains to be elucidated about its function, including its downstream targets and its interactions with other signaling pathways important for C. neoformans growth in mammalian hosts. In a previous study conducted in the Heitman lab, the phospholipid-binding protein Cts1 was identified and shown to function coordinately with the calcineurin pathway in C. neoformans. It was found that Cts1 plays a critical role in cell wall organization and high temperature growth, and that overexpression of Cts1 is able to restore growth at 37°C in a calcineurin mutant strain.

My project has focused on further examining the link between the calcineurin pathway and Cts1, with the goal of determining whether Cts1 functions as a downstream substrate of the calcineurin-signaling pathway.

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