Researcher

Samara Reck-Peterson

Profile

Samara Reck-Peterson is Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at UC San Diego and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Her laboratory is a world leader in understanding how cytoplasmic dynein — the primary minus-end-directed microtubule motor — is regulated and how dysfunction in dynein-dependent transport causes neurodegenerative disease. Reck-Peterson's group combined single-molecule biophysics, structural biology, and cell biology to determine how dynein is activated by the adaptor complex dynactin and specific cargo adaptors, resolving a long-standing mystery in motor biology. Her work identified regulatory mechanisms controlling dynein processivity, force generation, and directionality, with direct relevance to understanding ALS, Huntington's disease, and other neurological disorders linked to axonal transport defects. The Reck-Peterson laboratory uses single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, cryo-EM, CRISPR genome editing, and high-content live-cell imaging — representing significant purchasing of advanced microscopy platforms and reagents. She has developed yeast and mammalian cell systems as tractable models for studying motor dysfunction and has expanded into in vivo models of neurodegeneration. Reck-Peterson has received an HHMI Investigator award, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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