| Asst Prof Wong Siew Peng Esther
Assistant Professor
Division of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology
School of Biological Sciences
College of Science
Email: ESTHERWONG@ntu.edu.sg
Phone: (+65)63162848
Office: SBS-03n-05 |
| Education |
- PhD National University of Singapore 2004
- BSc(Hons) National University of Singapore 1998
|
| Biography |
• 2011-present Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• 2010-2011 Instructor, Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
• 2007-2010 Research Fellow, Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
• 2004-2007 Postdoctoral Fellow, National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore
Awards
• 2011 Travel Fellowship, 44th Annual Winter Conference on Brain Research, Keystone,
CO, USA
• 2008-2010 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Hereditary Disease Foundation, NY, USA
• 2008 Runner-up Best Poster Award, Gordon Research Conference, Autophagy in
Stress, Development and Disease, California, USA
• 2007-2008 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, NY, USA
• 2007 Postdoctoral Travel Award, Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
• 2000 Best Poster Award, 18th International Congress of Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology, Birmingham, UK
• 2000 Young Investigator Award, Protein 2000 New Horizons in Protein Structural
Analysis, Synthesis & Function, London, UK
• 1998-2001 Research Scholarship, National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Research Interests |
My research focuses on autophagy, a cellular quality control pathway involved in protein degradation by lysosomes. The overall goal of my research is to elucidate yet unknown mechanisms in the degradation of proteins by autophagy and how the related defects result in accumulation of damaged components, proteotoxicity and loss of cognitive functions associated with neurodegeneration and aging.
Harnessing autophagy to control protein homeostasis has been shown to be protective in many age-related pathologies. Central to my research focus is the characterization of the mechanisms behind autophagic dysfunctions in neurodegenerative diseases. Understanding the mechanisms behind these aberrations will allow us in future delineating interventions to restore autophagic function and mitigate disease progression. In addition, autophagic activity also decreases with physiological aging resulting in the progressive intracellular accumulation of nonfunctional proteins characteristic of old organisms. In particular, prevention of the age-related decline in a selective form of autophagy, known as chaperone-mediated autophagy, has been shown to preserve “young-like” cellular and organ function as well as homeostasis in mice. These major beneficial effects underscore the importance of determining new means to regulate/restore the activities of different autophagic pathways. Our recent work supports a novel connection between ubiquitination and autophagy. The other objective of my lab is to elucidate the regulatory role of the ubiquitin system over selective forms of autophagy and understand how changes in this regulatory mechanism with age contribute to autophagic dysfunctions in aging and age-related disorders. |
| Research Grant |
- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (2012-)
- Start Up Grant (2011-)
|
| Current Projects |
- Regulatory role of ubiquitin in chaperone-mediated autophagy in aging and neurodegeneration
- Targeting aggregated proteins for selective autophagy degradation
| Selected Publications | - Wong, E.*, Bejarano, E., Rakshit, M., Lee, K., Hanson, H.H., Zaarur, N., Phillips, G.R., Sherman, M.Y. and Cuervo, A.M.*. (2012). Molecular determinants of selective clearance of protein inclusions by autophagy (*Co-corresponding author). Nat. Commun., 3, 1240.
- Kaushik S, Bandyopadhyay U, Sridhar S, Kiffin R, Martinez-Vicente M, Kon M, Wong E, Cuervo AM. (2011). Chaperone-mediated autophagy at a glance. J. Cell Sci., 124, 0021-9533.
- Wong, E. and Cuervo, A.M. (2010). Neuronal autophagy gone awry: many fixings for the autophagic wrong-doing. Nature Neuroscience, 13, 805-811.
- Martinez-Vicente, M.*, Talloczy, Z.*, Wong, E.*, Tang, G., Koga, H., Kaushik, S., de Vries, R., Arias, E., Harris, S., Sulzer, D. and Cuervo, A.M. (2010). Cargo recognition failure is responsible for inefficient autophagy in Huntington’s Disease. (*equal contribution). Nature Neuroscience, 13(5), 567-576.
- Wong E and Cuervo AM. (2010). Integration of clearance mechanisms: the proteasome and autophagy. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology , 2(12), a006734.
|
|