Email: dmor@augusta.edu
Mailing Address:
Dept. of Neuroscience
& Regenerative Medicine
1120 15th Street, Rm. CA4014
Medical College of Georgia
at Augusta University
Augusta, GA 30912
2010-2016 Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
2006-2010 B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
2016-2020 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
“We use the nematode worm, C. elegans, to study age-related disease phenotypes,
including neurodegeneration and protein aggregation.”
Parkinson’s disease, neurodegeneration, aging, microbiome in disease
The main goal of my research is to identify mechanisms and modifiers of α-synuclein toxicity in Parkinson’s disease, using the nematode worm C. elegans. Parkinson’s is an age-related neurodegenerative disorder in which patients experience both motor and non-motor symptoms. A defining feature of the disease is the formation of abnormal protein aggregates containing α-synuclein, yet the causes and consequences of α-synuclein aggregation remain unclear. Increasing evidence suggests that α-synuclein pathology may first appear in neurons innervating the gastrointestinal tract, and may spread in a prion-like manner to the central nervous system. Our research focuses on identifying the factors that regulate α-synuclein prion-like spread and neurotoxicity, using a combination of high-resolution imaging, cell type-specific RNA-sequencing, metabolomics, and high-throughput genetic and drug screening approaches. Another major interest of the lab is to understand the role of diet and the microbiome in Parkinson’s disease.
