Joel Goodman UT Southwestern, USA

Joel Goodman is professor in the Department of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. His general research interests are in organelle biogenesis, protein trafficking, membrane structure, and lipid metabolism. Most of his studies are performed using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In earlier decades the lab focus was on peroxisomal structure, function, and biogenesis. Goodman was among the first to isolate fungal peroxisomes, determine their composition and metabolic function, clone the first genes for peroxisomal membrane proteins, establish their topology, identify their targeting sequences, and kinetically track their trafficking from cytosol to peroxisomes. These studies led to the revolutionary finding in 1994 that folded oligomeric proteins were capable of translocating across the peroxisomal membrane.

More recent work in the lab is directed to understand how cytoplasmic lipid droplets are assembled. Goodman identified seipin, a protein known to be responsible for severe congenital generalized lipodystrophy, as the first protein factor involved in droplet assembly. Seipins are integral membrane proteins in the ER and are conserved in animals, plants and fungi. In work in progress, the atomic structure of seipin reveals a 10-mer in yeast, most of it lying on the luminal site of the membrane. The lab also recently identified the first yeast perilipin, which interacts with seipin to form the early droplet bud at the ER. Current studies focus on how seipin, perilipin, and other proteins collaborate in droplet formation, and the role of droplets in maintaining other cellular structures.

Institutional Website: http://profiles.utsouthwestern.edu/profile/12677/joel-goodman.html