Kate White

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Many questions remain on how the structure and function of proteins, complexes, organelles, and cells are coordinated during normal cellular functions and how this is disrupted in disease. My goal is to help bridge the gap between structural biology and physiology by pioneering new experimental and computational tools for multi-scale structural biology (atomic to cellular scales).

Towards this goal we use pancreatic ß-cells as a model system to investigate:

1) the role of distinct micro-environments in subcellular neighborhoods on protein structure and function,
2) the role of insulinotropic drugs (compounds that stimulate insulin synthesis and secretion) on cellular rearrangements, including organelle-organelle interactions and trafficking, and
3) the development of an infrastructure to support community engagement in whole-cell modeling.

I am also the Director of the Pancreatic ß-Cell Consortium (PBCC) (www.pbcconsortium.org) which is an interdisciplinary team focused on developing integrative approaches to whole-cell modeling using the ß-cell as a model system.