Scott D. Emr
Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics
Director, Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology &
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics

Phone

607-255-0816

Address

Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics
307 Biotechnology Building
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-2703

Email

Web Sites

Background

Scott D. Emr is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Director of the Cornell Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology. He received his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Genetics from Harvard Medical School in 1981. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, he has held positions at the University of California, Berkeley (Miller Research Scholar; 1981-1983), the California Institute of Technology (Assistant and Associate Professor; 1983-1991) and the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (Full Professor and Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; 1991-2007). Dr. Emr counts among his early honors a Searle Scholars Award and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. He has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004) and the American Academy of Microbiology (1998). In 2003, he was awarded the Hansen Foundation Gold Medal Prize for elucidating intracellular sorting and transport pathways. In 2007, he was awarded the Avanti Prize for his key contributions in understanding lipid signaling pathways. He also serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Pew Scholars Program in Biomedical Sciences supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Research Description

Our lab studies the regulation of cell signaling and membrane trafficking pathways by phosphoinositide kinases, protein kinases, selective ubiquitin modifications, and vesicle-mediated transport reactions.

All eukaryotic cells maintain an elaborate system of vesicular transport pathways that convey cargo in and out of the cell via the endocytic and secretory systems. Our long-term goal has been to define the complex regulatory processes that ensure the temporal and spatial specificity of these membrane trafficking systems. We have focused our research in two major areas: (1) endocytic trafficking and receptor down-regulation and (2) phosphoinositide lipid- and ubiquitin-dependent membrane sorting pathways. more

Selected Publications

Gill, D.J., J. Sun, O. Perisic, DB Veprintsev, Y. Vallis, S.D. Emr, R.L. Williams. 2007. Structural Studies of phosphoinositide 3-kinase-dependent traffic to multivesicular bodies. Biochem. Soc. Symp. (74):47-57.

Gill, D.H., H.Teo, O. Perisidic, J. Sun, S.D. Emr and R.L. Williams. 2007.Structural insight into the ESCRT-I-II super-complex and its interaction networks on membranes. EMBO J. 26(2): 600-12
Chu, T., J. Sun, S. Saksena, and S.D. Emr. 2006. New component of ESCRT-I regulates endosomal sorting complex assembly. J. Cell Biol. 175(5): 815-23.

Morosova, N. Y. Liang, A.A. Tokagerev, S.H. Chen, R. Cox, J. Andrejic, Z. Lipatova, V.A. Sciorra, S.D. Emr and N. Segev. 2006. TRAPPII subunits are required for the specificity switch of a Ypt-Rab GEF. Nat. Cell Biol. 8: 1263-1269.

Tabuchi, M., A. Audhya, A.B. Parsons, C. Boone and S.D. Emr. 2006. The I4,5P2 effectors Slm1 and Slim2 link calcineurin and sphingolipid signaling pathway. Mol. Cell Biol. 26: 5861-5875.

Kostelansky, M.S., J. Sun, S. Lee, J. Kim, R. Ghirlando, A. Hierro, S.D. Emr and J.H. Hurley. 2006. Structural and functional organization of the ESCRT-I trafficking complex.Cell. 125: 113-126.

Teo, H., D.J. Gill, J.Sun, O. Perisic, D.B. Veprintsev, Y. Vallis, S.D. Emr and R.L. Williams. 2006. Structures of the ESCRT-I core and the ESCRT-II GLUE domain: central role for GLUE domain in direct linking to ESCRT-I, phosphoinositides and ubiquitin. 2006. Cell. 125: 99-111.

Hurley, J.H., and S.D. Emr. 2006. The ECSRT complexes: structure and mechanism of a membrane-trafficking network. Ann. Rev. Biophys. Biomol. Struc. 35: 277-298.

Efe, J. A., F. Plattner, N. Hulo, D. Kressler, P. Linder, S. D. Emr and O. Deloche. 2005. Yeast Mon2p is a highly conserved protein that functions in the cytoplasm-to-vacuole transport pathway and is required for Golgi homeostasis. J. Cell Sci. 1118: 4751-4764.

Parrish, W. P., C. J. Stefan and S. D. Emr. 2005. PI 3-phosphate accumulation in triple lipid phosphatase-deletion mutants triggers lethal hyper-activation of the Rho1p/Pkc1p cell integrity MAP kinase pathway. J. Cell Sci. 118: 5589-5601.

Efe, J. A., R. J. Botelho and S. D. Emr. 2005. The Fab1 phosphatidylinositol kinase pathway in the regulation of vacuole morphology. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 4: 402-408.

Stefan, C. J., S. M. Padilla, A. Audhya and S. D. Emr. 2005. The Phosphoinositide Phosphatase Sjl2 Is Recruited to Cortical Actin Patches in the Control of Vesicle Formation and Fission. Mol. Cell Biol. 25: 2910-2923.

Sciorra V.A., A.Audhya, A. B. Parsons, N. Segev, C. Boone and S.D. Emr. 2005. Synthetic genetic array analysis of the PtdIns 4-kinase Pik1p identifies components in a Golgi-specific Ypt31/rab-GTPase signaling pathway. Mol. Biol. Cell : 776-793.

Shohdy, N., Efe, J.A., Emr, S.D. and Shuman, H.A. 2005. Pathogen effector protein screening in yeast identifies Legionella factors that interfere with membrane trafficking. PNAS. 102: 4866-4871.

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