Dennis Hsu, MD

Summary

I am a physician-scientist whose research efforts have focused specifically on codon usage, tRNA biology, and amino acid metabolism in colorectal and gastric cancers. Using a combination of computational modeling and wet-lab experiments, I found that amino acid availability directly influences tRNA availability and gene expression in a codon-dependent manner, and also potentially affects the evolution of the cancer genome. I plan to better dissect the contribution of the tumor microenvironment towards nutritional stress of cancer cells as well as determine how tRNA synthetases contribute to survival under starvation conditions.