Overview
The mission of the Herz Lab is to explore the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which an ancient class of conserved and structurally closely related cell surface receptors, the LDL receptor gene family, controls fundamental signaling pathways that are essential for brain development, neurotransmission, and vessel wall integrity, and that broadly impact human diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and atherosclerosis.
In our quest to understand the underlying biochemical principles by which these proteins induce or modulate such a variety of superficially unrelated cellular and developmental events, we study the function of these genes by selectively and specifically altering them in the mammalian organism.