Audrey Gasch

Assistant Professor of Genetics

Lab Home Page:: Gasch Lab
Address:: 3426 Genetics/Biotech
Telephone:: 265-0859
Email:: agasch@wisc.edu

Research Fields:: Gene Expression; Genomics; Population/Evolution

Ph.D. (2000) Stanford University

Postdoctoral Research: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/University of California, Berkeley, 2000-2003

Research Interests

The role, regulation, and evolution of fungal genomic expression responses to stress

Research Description

All organisms must be able to sense and respond to their environment and defend themselves against environmental stress. We previously used DNA microarrays to examine the yeast response to environmental stresses and identified a large gene expression program, called the environmental stress response (ESR), that is activated by many types of stress. The ESR consists of ~1000 gene expression changes that include ~600 repressed genes and ~350 induced genes. We are combining functional genomics and computational biology with traditional techniques in genetics and biochemistry to understand the role, regulation, and evolution of this response.

The ESR is triggered by diverse types of stress, however the regulation of this program is condition-specific and governed by many different transcription factors, RNA binding proteins, and upstream signaling pathways depending on the conditions. We are taking an integrated approach to elucidate the signal transduction network that governs this response. In addition to learning how the ESR is coordinated, we are using this system to decipher rules of signal transduction and transcriptional regulation in a model eukaryote.

We are also exploring the mechanisms through which gene expression regulation evolves. Using comparative genomic approaches, we are examining the variation in stress-triggered gene expression changes within and between species in the Ascomycete clade. This information, coupled with genomic comparisons of the more than 20 fungal genomes currently available, is being used to develop models for how cis-regulation and signal transduction evolve and how environmental interactions contribute to evolution.

Representative Publications

Search Pubmed for more publications by Audrey Gasch

Gasch, A.P., Moses, A.M., Chiang, D.Y., Fraser, H.B., Berardini, M., and Eisen, M.B. 2004. Conservation and evolution of cis-regulatory systems in Ascomycete fungi. PLoS Biology. 2(12):e398.
Gasch, A.P. and Eisen, M.B. 2002. Exploring the conditional coregulation of yeast gene expression through fuzzy k-means clustering. Genome Biol. 3(11):RESEARCH0059.
Gasch, A.P. and Werner-Washburne, M. 2002. The genomics of yeast responses to environmental stress and starvation. Funct Integr Genomics.2(4-5):181-92. Review.
Gasch A.P., Huang M., Metzner S., Botstein D., Elledge S.J., Brown P.O. 2001. Genomic expression responses to DNA-damaging agents and the regulatory role of the yeast ATR homolog Mec1p. Mol Biol Cell. 12(10):2987-3003.
Gasch A.P., Spellman P.T., Kao C.M., Carmel-Harel O., Eisen M.B., Storz G., Botstein D., Brown, P.O. 2000. Genomic expression programs in the response of yeast cells to environmental changes. Mol Biol Cell. 11(12):4241-57.