Meghan Lee Arnold is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University in Dr. Monica Driscoll’s lab using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism to study the mechanisms of pathology in neurodegenerative diseases. Research interests include: aging neurons, neurodegenerative diseases, exopher biology, aggresome biology, autophagy, proteostasis mechanisms, and aggregate biology.
In her PhD studies, Meghan is researching a novel process by which cells maintain proteostasis-- the disposal of cellular trash outside the cell, called exophergenesis. Much has been learned about the various ways in which neurons handle aggregates and cellular ‘trash’. Since the first publication on exophers in 2017, Meghan gained experience in C. elegans neurobiology, mechanistically bringing to light a proteostasis-related organelle not yet described in C. elegans, the aggresome.
Meghan is currently funded by an NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Research Fellowship and will be looking for a post-doctoral position in 2022.
