Coleen T. Murphy

Coleen T. Murphy is a geneticist and Richard B. Fisher Preceptor in Integrative Genomics Professor of Molecular Biology at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. She is director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories For Aging Research at Princeton.[1]

Coleen T. Murphy
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Houston
Stanford University
Known forStudies of aging mechanisms using C. elegans as a model
Scientific career
FieldsGenomics
InstitutionsPrinceton University
Doctoral advisorJames Spudich
Other academic advisorsCynthia Kenyon

Education

Murphy completed a B.S. with honors in biochemical and biophysical sciences at the University of Houston and earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University with James A. Spudich as her advisor. She was awarded a graduate fellowship at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.[2]

Research interests

Murphy's lab at Princeton focuses on identifying transcriptional targets related to longevity, using the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model. Early in her career, Murphy and her postdoctoral mentor Cynthia Kenyon determined that by deactivating one C. elegans gene, called "daf-2", the worms' life expectancy doubled and they expressed a delayed senescence, showing marked behavioral improvements in long-term memory, working memory, and navigational capabilities as compared to the control.[3] The specific longevity genes she is interested in relate to communication between different types of tissue. Once these genetic pathways in different tissue types are identified, they can be monitored in vitro in C. elegans. Since many of the genetic pathways in C. elegans are comparable to those in other organisms, including a 40% overlap with the human genome, Murphy's work is providing a better understanding of how genes related to longevity in humans express themselves, and how the breakdown of communication pathways between tissues during aging occurs. Murphy's lab developed a new suite of techniques that allow for localized tissue sampling, allowing research into these differentiated signal pathways in various tissue types within the same organism to take place.[4]

Based on the success of her early work, the National Institutes of Health awarded Murphy a NIH Pioneer Award in 2015.[5] In 2016, Murphy was selected as a faculty scholar by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.[6]

References
  1. "Glenn Laboratories For Aging Research - Lewis-Sigler Institute". Princeton University. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  2. "Coleen T. Murphy, Ph.D. CV" (PDF). Princeton University. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  3. Murphy, C.T.; McCarroll, S.A.; Bargmann, C.I; Fraser, A.; Kamath, R.S.; Ahringer, J.; Li, H.; Kenyon, C. (2003). "Genes that act downstream of DAF-16 to influence the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans". Nature. 424: 277–283. doi:10.1038/nature01789. PMID 12845331.
  4. "Creative Minds: The Worm Tissue-ome Teaches Developmental Biology for Us All". National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  5. "Coleen Murphy receives NIH Pioneer Award". Princeton University. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  6. "Coleen Murphy selected as HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholar | Lewis-Sigler Institute". lsi.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-26.
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