Vikki Weake
Purdue University, IN·Biochemistry
Cells use small molecules from metabolism to place chemical tags on DNA and its packaging proteins. These tags, part of the epigenome, help decide which genes switch on and when.
- Fields
Biochemistry
Genetics
Neuroscience
- Topics
Drosophila
fruit fly
circadian rhythm
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Test whether oxidative stress inhibits Ahcy, the enzyme that breaks down SAH, at active genes in aging Drosophila photoreceptors, causing local loss of histone methylation.
- Determine how loss of histone methylation and of circadian regulators such as Clock and Cycle alters rhythmic gene expression and leads to retinal degeneration in the aging fly eye.
- Measure how Alzheimer's-associated tau changes circadian gene expression, one-carbon metabolism and histone methylation in the clock cells of the fly brain and eye.
- Use fly genetics to test whether Gnmt, human NNMT and Ahcy, enzymes that set the SAM to SAH ratio, are necessary or sufficient for tau's disruption of circadian behavior.
- Test whether blue-light-induced oxidation of cysteines in three phototransduction proteins lowers light sensitivity and enables light adaptation, using redox proteomics and electrophysiology.
- Determine whether a blue-light flavoprotein in the photoreceptor rhabdomere triggers redox signaling that turns off phototransduction independently of the light receptor Rhodopsin.
More about the research
How aging and disease change these molecules, and whether that disrupts the body's daily clock, is the central question here. The work uses the fruit fly Drosophila, which shares its circadian clock and epigenetic machinery with humans but ages much faster. Two projects link metabolism, chromatin (DNA wound around histone proteins) and daily gene rhythms in the aging eye and in Alzheimer's disease (AD). A third project asks how chemical changes triggered by light tune the fly's visual signaling.
Why it matters
This work could help explain why older adults face a higher risk of retinal degeneration and other eye disease. It could also show whether disrupted sleep and daily rhythms actively drive Alzheimer's disease rather than only reflecting it. Enzymes such as Gnmt, Ahcy and NNMT that control methylation capacity may point to metabolic targets for people with dementia. The vision project adds basic knowledge of how GPCR signaling pathways are tuned, which may inform related pathways in neurons and cell growth.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Amy Karol Walker
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Biology
Uncover the mechanisms that regulate local production of S-adenosylmethionine (SAM), the cell's main methyl-group donor, by individual SAM synthase enzymes.
Daniel Promislow
Tufts University, MA·Biology
Develop sex- and tissue-specific metabolome clocks in Drosophila, along with the first longitudinal clock that follows the same flies' metabolite levels over time.
Ravi Allada
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience
Map sleep- and wake-dependent changes in gene activity in the Drosophila brain at single-cell resolution, using single-cell RNA sequencing to find the cells and genes that track sleep need.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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