Courses:  Biological Science I (BIOL 121), Fundamentals of Genetics (BIOL 350), Molecular Biology and Evolution (BIOL 450)

Research Interests: The infectious prion diseases share many features with common age related neurodegenerative diseases isuch as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. My lab is using the [URE3] prion of the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model system to investigate the molecular details of amyloid fiber formation in simple eukaryotic cells.

• Molecular and structural analysis of the yeast prion [URE3]
• Cellular toxicity of amyloid fibers.

Selected Publications:

Pierce, M. M., Baxa, U., Steven, A.C., Bax, A.and Wickner R.B. 2005. Is the prion domain of soluble Ure2p unstructured? Biochemistry 44:321-8

Wickner, R.B., Edskes, H.K., Ross, E.D., Pierce, M. M., Shewmaker, F., Baxa, U., and Brachmann, A. 2005. Prions of yeast are genes made of protein: amyloids and enzymes. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology. 69:489-96

Wickner, R.B., Edskes, H.K., Ross, E.D., Pierce, M. M., Baxa, U., Brachmann, A., and Shewmaker, F., 2004. Prion Genetics: new rules for a new kind of gene. Annual Review of Genetics. 38:681-707.

Pierce, M.M., Maddelein, M.L., Roberts, B.T. and Wickner, R.B. A novel RTG2p activity regulates nitrogen catabolism in yeast. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98:13213-8.

Pierce, M.M. and Nall, B.T. 2000. Coupled kinetic traps in cytochrome c folding: His-heme misligation and proline isomerization. J. Mol. Biol. 298:955-69.