Research Areas and Projects

The Banerjee laboratory combines classical and cutting-edge research techniques to investigate the molecular etiology of environmental health issues with a strong focus on chronic arsenic toxicity. Chronic arsenic exposure affects >225 million people in over 108 countries, leading to myriads of cancerous and non-cancerous adverse health outcomes encompassing multiple tissues, organs, and developmental stages. Since arsenic does not interact with nucleic acids, the focus of Banerjee laboratory is to elucidate how direct physical interaction of arsenic with target zinc finger proteins can modulate basic biological processes operative in every cell and tissue, contributing to multi-organ toxicity. Zinc finger proteins are abundant in the human genome, often acting as apical regulators of processes related to genome, transcriptome and proteome organization, maintenance, and expression. Thus, functional disruption of such apical regulatory proteins is expected to affect multiple facets of basic biological processes across multiple cells, tissue, and organs, leading to multi-organ toxicity. Current projects in the laboratory include understanding the molecular mechanisms of chronic arsenic exposure-induced dysregulation of transcriptome, epitranscriptome, proteome and degradome and their contribution to multi-organ toxicity. The Banerjee laboratory employs both cell culture systems (primary and immortalized) and animal models, along with a wide range of molecular biological, biophysical and omics techniques to address these research questions.