A key focus of the Stagljar lab is to understand the function of a wide range of pharmaceutically relevant yeast and human integral membrane proteins involved in cell signaling and membrane transport at a systems level. Despite extensive research in the past decade, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of protein networks associated with these integral membrane proteins because of their unique biochemical features, enormous complexity and multiplicity. This is a major obstacle for designing improved and more targeted therapies, and importantly, understanding the biology of deregulation of these integral membrane proteins which leads to numerous human diseases.

Our lab is internationally known for the development of the split-ubiquitin Membrane Yeast Two-Hybrid (MYTH) and Mammalian Membrane Two-Hybrid (MaMTH) technologies, powerful tools for the identification of interactors of a given integral membrane protein and one of the key interactive proteomic technologies available to researchers today. To date, MYTH and MaMTH have lead to many groundbreaking discoveries, including the elucidation of functions of various integral membrane proteins involved in human health and disease.

Currently, there are several large-scale, ongoing projects in the lab aimed towards elucidating how yeast and human integral membrane proteins and their interacting partners lead to either diseased or healthy states. These studies include mapping of protein interaction networks of various families of membrane proteins such as ABC Transporters, Receptor Tyrosine Kinases, G-protein Coupled Receptors, Cancer Stem Cell Receptors and Ion Channels. Subsequently, proteins and pathways identified by our initial protein interaction screens are studied in depth using various genetic, molecular, and biochemical approaches, shedding light on cell signaling and membrane transport pathways, which control cell behavior in normal and disease cells at a systems level.