Research interests
Calcium plays a crucial role as a second messenger in various intracellular signaling pathways and can also regulate cell metabolism by activating different metabolic enzymes. Calcium is stored intracellularly in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which interacts with the mitochondria through the so-called "ER-mitochondria contact sites". Little is known about how mitochondrial calcium homeostasis is maintained in B cells and how changes in mitochondrial calcium levels affect B cell metabolism and cell fate decisions. My goal is to investigate how Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter (MCU) affects calcium homeostasis and mitochondrial activity in B cells, to analyze how mitochondrial calcium levels change in cells experiencing ER stress, and to identify the molecular mechanisms regulating the formation and the maintenance of ER-mitochondrial contact sites.
