Jeremy Reiter is the chairperson of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. His lab investigates how cilia form, signal and function in intercellular communication. Their achievements include:
1. The discovery that Smoothened, a critical component of the Hedgehog pathway, localizes to and works in cilia. This was the first demonstration that the Hedgehog signal transduction machinery functions at cilia.
2. They were the first to show that cancers can be ciliated and that cancers can require cilia for growth.
3. They helped show that the region at the base of the cilium called the transition zone is a gate that controls ciliary composition. For example, the transition zone regulates the ciliary localization of Smoothened and, therefore, is required for Hedgehog signaling.
4. They identified many transition zone components and discovered that some ciliopathies are caused by inherited human mutations in these transition zone components.
5. They found a phosphoinositide that marks the ciliary membrane and helps direct which proteins localize to cilia. This was the first identification of a specific cilia-enriched lipid.
6. They investigated how cilia regulate adult tissue homeostasis. Recently, they have shown how cilia of hypothalamic neurons signal to regulate satiety and how cilia restrict adipogenesis.