Dr. SAVRAJ GREWAL

PhD (Portland, OR) Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.

Affiliations: Member - Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute. 
                                         Genes and Development Research Group

Research Interests:

Ribosome synthesis and the control of cell growth
 Our research is aimed at understanding how cells grow and multiply. The coordinated regulation of cell growth and proliferation is essential during animal development for controlling organ and organism size, while in cancer deregulated cell growth is often an early event in tumor formation. Our lab uses a combination of molecular, genetic, and proteomic approaches to study cell growth in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.  The processes that control cell growth are remarkably similar across different species; for example, in both humans and fruit flies similar genes regulate cell growth and mutations in these genes often lead to cancer. These similarities allow us to use the fruit fly as a simple, yet powerful genetic system to study how these genes control cell growth by affecting ribosome production.

Ribosomes are the cellular organelles that synthesize all of the proteins and enzymes in a cell, including those essential for growth. Abnormal overproduction of ribosomes is often seen in cancer cells, and may contribute to the runaway cell growth that is characteristic of this disease. The broad goal of the our lab is to identify the mechanisms that regulate ribosome synthesis and to determine how this process is targeted by oncogene and tumor supressor signaling pathways. This work should help to determine how the regulation of ribosome production controls cell growth, and may lead to new ways to target cancer cells for therapy."

 Link to Grewal Lab

Personnel:

View Pub Med for Recent publications & abstracts

Recent Publications:

•  Li L, Edgar B.A.E, Grewal S.S. (2010) Nutritional control of gene expression in Drosophila larvae via TOR, Myc and a novel cis-regulatory element. BMC Cell Biology. 11, 7
• Grewal S.S., Evans, J and Edgar B.A. (2007) Drosophila TIF-IA controls ribosome synthesis and cell growth, and is regulated by the TOR pathway. J. Cell Biol accepted.
• Hall, D.J., Grewal, S.S., de la Cruz, A. and Edgar, B.A. (2007) Rheb and TOR regulate protein synthesis, but not bulk nutrient uptake, in Drosophila. BMC Biology, 5, 10
• Orian, A., Grewal, S.S., Knoepfler, P.S., Edgar, B.A., Parkhurst, S.M. and Eisenman, R.N. (2005) Genomic binding and transcriptional regulation by the Drosophila Myc and Mnt transcription factors. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in Quantitative Biology, LXX, v.1.0.
• Grewal, S.S , Li. L, Orian, A., Eisenman, R.N. and Edgar, B.A. (2005) Drosophila Myc regulates ribosomal RNA synthesis during development. Nat Cell Biol. 7: 295-302.

Contact Information: 

The University of Calgary
Room 2A10, Health Research Innovation Centre
3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2N 4N1
Phone: 403-210-6535
Fax: 403-210-9563
Email: grewalss [at] ucalgary [dot] ca