Associate Professor
Research Areas: Nervous system development; ubiquitin; protein degradation

Biography

My laboratory is interested in identifying genes essential for the development and function of the peripheral nervous system. Using spontaneously occurring neurological mouse mutations, we have identified several critical regulators of neuronal signaling during development. Our studies of these mouse mutants have demonstrated that ubiquitin signaling is required during multiple steps of nervous system development to control protein abundance as well as the activation of protein kinases.

Our current approaches utilize both in vivo and in vitro systems to explore the requirements of the ubiquitin-proteasome system in regulating neuronal function. These approaches include the development of conditional knockout mice to evaluate the requirement of different gene products in specific neural populations and the culturing of primary neural cells to identify the cellular pathways that are regulated by ubiquitin signaling.

Education

Graduate School
Ph.D., Genetics, University of Florida

Postdoctoral Fellowship
Mammalian Genetics, National Cancer Institute

Contact

Office
Shelby 914

Email
livvy01.uab.edu

Phone
205.975.5573