Dr Samuel Dean
Supervisor Details
Research Interests
My research addresses a fundamental question in cell biology: how eukaryotic cells build, size and use cilia and flagella. I use trypanosomatid parasites as a model system because they combine extraordinary experimental tractability with real-world importance as pathogens of humans and animals. Each cell carries a single flagellum, assembled at a defined point in the cell cycle, and the parasites are amenable to rapid genetic manipulation. My group has a long standing focus on the transition zone, the gateway at the base of the flagellum that controls which proteins enter it, and on the mechanisms of flagellar assembly and central pair formation. We recently discovered a conserved transition zone protein that acts as a molecular ruler, setting the length of this structure, and we are now dissecting how it works and whether the principle holds across related parasites.
A second strand of the lab asks how parasites use the flagellum for sensing rather than swimming. The intracellular amastigote of Trypanosoma cruzi retains a short, actively beating flagellum that has long been dismissed as vestigial; we are testing whether it allows the parasite to sense and respond to its host cell during chronic infection. Across both strands we develop and apply new tools, including endogenous tagging systems, inducible protein depletion, expansion and super-resolution microscopy, automated image analysis and proximity proteomics. I co-founded TrypTag, a genome-wide protein localisation resource for T. brucei, and have a strong interest in rigorous, quantitative analysis of imaging data.
Research Groups
MIBTP Project Details
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