Lee Bardwell

Picture of Lee Bardwell
Professor, Developmental & Cell Biology
School of Biological Sciences
PH.D., Stanford University, 1992
B.A., Wesleyan University, CT, 1984
Phone: (949) 824-6902
Fax: (949) 824-4709
Email: bardwell@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
Dept. of Developmental & Cell Biology
2208 Natural Sciences I
Mail Code: 2300
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
How cell signaling networks work, and how they achieve specificity.
Academic Distinctions
2004-05 National Academies of Sciences Keck Futures Initiative Grantee
1999-02 Beckman Young Investigator Award, Beckman Foundation
1999-02 New Investigator Award - Pharmacological Sciences, Burroughs Wellcome Fund
1997-00 Special Fellow Award, Leukemia Society of America
1993-96 NIH National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship
1987-91 Predoctoral Training Grant, National Cancer Institute
1984 Phi Beta Kappa
1984 Sigma Xi
Appointments
1993-98 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley (Laboratory of Prof. Jeremy Thorner)
Research Abstract
Mechanisms of Specificity and Integration in Cell Signaling

The research in my laboratory is aimed at achieving an integrated molecular and systems-level understanding of the mechanisms by which intracellular signal transduction cascades execute a diverse repertoire of responses with efficiency and fidelity, and how this impacts human disease.

We focus not just on individual pathways, but also on the issues raised by the interactions of multiple pathways.

We are particular motivated by trying to answer the following questions:

· How do protein kinases find their correct substrates? Can we predict new substrates? Can we visualize kinase-substrate transactions in live cells?

· How is specificity from signal to cellular response maintained when networks are highly interconnected, and different pathways use similar or overlapping components?

· What evolutionary logic underlies the structure of signaling and gene regulatory networks? Why are they so complicated and interconnected? What performance objectives might these designs achieve?

· How can we translate our increasingly sophisticated systems-level understanding of regulatory processes into new ideas for treating human disease?

See our publications to get a better idea of what we do.
Publications
Bardwell L (2019)
Pseudokinases: Flippping the ATP for AMPylation.
Current Biology 29:R16–R37
Syed, A, et al. (2019)
Miles to go (mtgo) encodes FNDC3 proteins that interact with the chaperonin subunit CCT3 and are required for NMJ branching and growth in Drosophila.
Developmental Biology, 445: 37-53.
Bardwell, AJ, Lagunes, L, Zebarjedi, R, and Bardwell, L (2017)
The WW domain of the scaffolding protein IQGAP1 is neither necessary nor sufficient for binding to the MAPKs ERK1 and ERK2.
J. Biol. Chem., 292: 8750-8761
Bardwell AJ and Bardwell, L (2015)
Two hydrophobic residues can determine the specificity of MAP kinase docking interactions.
J. Biol. Chem., 290:26661-266674
Mattson-Hoss MK, Niitani Y, Gordon EA, Jun Y, Bardwell, L, Tomishige M, and Gross SP (2014)
CK2 activates kinesin via induction of a conformational change.
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2014 111:7000-7005
Gordon EA, Whisenant, TC, Zeller, M, Kaake, RM, Gordon, WM, Krotee, P, Patel, V., Huang, L, Baldi, P and Bardwell, L (2013)
Combining docking site and phosphosite predictions to find new substrates: Identification of Smoothelin-like-2 (SMTNL2) as a c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) substrate.
Cellular Signalling,25:2518-2529.
Chan, C, Liu, X, Wang, L, Bardwell, L, Nie, Q, Enciso, G (2012)
Protein Scaffolds Can Enhance the Bistability of Multisite Phosphorylation Systems
PLoS Computational Biology 8(6): e1002551
Xu, J, Reddy, Anand, P, Shu, Z, Cermelli, S, Mattson, MK, Tripathy, SK, Hoss, MT, James, NS, King, SJ, Huang, L, Bardwell, L and Gross, SP (2012)
Casein Kinase 2 Reverses Tail-Independent Inactivation of Kinesin-1
Nature Communications, 3:754.
Chou, C-S, Bardwell, L, Nie, Q and Yi, TM (2011)
Noise filtering tradeoffs in spatial gradient sensing and cell polarization response.
BMC Systems Biology, 5:196.
Bernardo, AS, Faial, T, Gardner, L, Niakan, KK, Ortmann, D, Senner, CE, Callery, EM, Trotter, MW, Hemberger, M, Smith, JC, Bardwell, L, Moffett, A, Pedersen, RA (2011)
BRACHYURY and CDX2 mediate BMP-induced differentiation of human and mouse pluripotent stem cells into embryonic and extraembryonic lineages.
Cell Stem Cell, 9:144-55.
Bardwell, L (2011)
Synthetic Biology: Modulating the MAP kinase module.
Current Biology, 21:R249-51.
TC Whisenant, DT Ho, RW Benz, JS Rogers, RM Kaake, EA Gordon, L Huang, P Baldi, L Bardwell (2010)
Computational Prediction and Experimental Verification of New MAP Kinase Docking Sites and Substrates Including Gli Transcription Factors.
PLoS Computational Biology 6:e10009084
S Haney, L Bardwell and Q Nie (2010)
Ultrasensitive responses and specificity in cell signaling.
BMC Systems Biology 4: 119.
X Liu, L Bardwell and Q Nie (2010)
A combination of multisite phosphorylation and substrate sequestration produces switch-like responses.
Biophysical Journal 98: 1396-407.
AJ Bardwell, E Frankson and L Bardwell (2009)
Selectivity of docking sites in MAPK kinases.
Journal of Biological Chemistry 284: 13165-73.
Z Hilioti, W Sabbagh Jr, S Paliwal, A Bergmann, MD Goncalves, L Bardwell, A Levchenko (2008)
Oscillatory phosphorylation of yeast Fus3 MAP kinase controls periodic gene expression and morphogenesis.
Current Biology 18:1700-6.
L Bardwell (2008)
Signal transduction: turning a switch into a rheostat.
Current Biology 18:R910-2.
My latest publications are listed on my lab website:

http://faculty.sites.uci.edu/bardwell/
Graduate Programs
Biotechnology
Cellular and Molecular Biosciences
Mathematical and Computational Biology
Research Centers
UCI/Chao Family Cancer Center
UCI Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics
UCI Center for Complex Biological Systems
Last updated
05/20/2019