Helen C. Causton, DPhil

  • Assistant Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology
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Overview

Academic Appointments

  • Assistant Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology

Research

Rhythms are found throughout biology and allow an organism to temporally orchestrate its internal state to anticipate changes and/or resonate with the external environment. Despite the importance of robust circadian rhythms to human health, the central mechanism has been hard to dissect. I have shown that ultradian (~5h) respiratory oscillations in yeast, which occur in the absence of a clock, draw on aspects of the conserved cellular architecture, and share diverse features with circadian rhythms across organisms. We are using systems- and molecular/cell biology-based approaches to characterize the yeast respiratory oscillation and ultimately seek to define the regulatory logic that underpins cellular function. Our current focus is directed towards understanding (i) how metabolism is regulated in time and (ii) the relationships between cellular and metabolic processes.

Research Interests

  • Understanding how cellular function is regulated in time

Selected Publications

  • John S. O'Neill, Nathaniel P. Hoyle, J. Brian Robertson, Rachel S. Edgar, Andrew D. Beale, Sew Y. Peak-Chew, Jason Day, Ana S. H. Costa, Christian Frezza, Helen C. Causton. Eukaryotic cell biology is temporally coordinated to support the energetic demands of protein homeostasis. Nature Communications 2020 Sep 17;11(1):4706. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18330-x. PMID: 32943618
  • Causton HC. Metabolic rhythms: A framework for coordinating cellular function. Eur J Neurosci. 2020 Jan;51(1):1-12. doi: 10.1111/ejn.14296. PMID: 30548718
  • Causton HC, Feeney KA, Ziegler CA, O'Neill JS. Metabolic Cycles in Yeast Share Features Conserved among Circadian Rhythms. Curr Biol. 2015 Apr 20;25(8):1056-62. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.035. PMID: 25866393