Kenneth Matreyek obtained a BSc in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from the University of California Los Angeles. He went on to earn a PhD in Virology from Harvard University, studying the molecular interactions that HIV uses to enter the nucleus of infected cells before integrating its viral genome. For his dissertation, he discovered that HIV uses its protective capsid shell to interact with the intrinsically disordered domains present on the nuclear pore protein NUP153. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Douglas Fowler at the University of Washington. There, he applied mammalian cell engineering and synthetic biology to develop multiplex genetic methods to simultaneously characterize thousands of protein variants within cultured human cell models. As an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow, he characterized how germline and somatic missense variants of the PTEN tumor suppressor contributes to disease. He joined the Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University during the fall of 2019.
Research Information
Research Interests
The Matreyek Lab seeks to understand how protein sequence variants contribute to disease, and discover rationally engineered proteins able to fight them. Traditional experimental approaches are incapable of characterizing the millions of germline and somatic missense variants already observed in people, and are inadequate for exploring the protein sequence landscapes possible through combinations of changes. We develop and deploy new multiplex genetic biotechnologies capable of assessing the impacts of protein sequence changes in human cell models at high throughput, focusing on genes that modulate immunity or predispose individuals to autoimmunity.
For more information, please visit the lab website: http://www.MatreyekLab.com.