Molecular pathways bring GRA scholar to UGA

Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Cell Biology Nathan Lewis joined the University of Georgia in fall 2024 with appointments in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Center for Molecular Medicine, the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center.

Our colleagues in UGA Research Communications share this Q & A with Lewis, in which he talks about his research into cellular communication and molecular pathways, as well as the professional and personal pathways that led him to move cross-country from California to Athens, Georgia.

Nathan Lewis: The big question is: How do cells know what they need to do? We have trillions of cells in each of us, and yet despite this massive number of cells making many decisions throughout our lives, we all come out looking quite similar to each other, and we all go through the same developmental stages. When I start thinking about the scale of that, it just boggles my mind.

The cells need to be able to communicate with each other, and this has been a major area of research for decades. Researchers discovered different molecules that cells send to each other—these could be secreted proteins, or small molecules, or even little molecular packages called exosomes. However, each receiving cell needs something to receive those messages. This is done with receptor proteins, mostly positioned on the outside of the cell.

When a signal is sent from one cell to the next, the receiving cell has pathways that relay that signal into its nucleus. Then new signals are relayed to other cells. All of physiology, both health and disease, emerges from these signals.

Is it fair to say the kind of research you do simply would not have been possible a couple decades ago, perhaps even 10 years ago?

Correct. It was not possible. It’s exciting to see technological developments open so many avenues. This is important because most therapeutics either target the secreted proteins or the receptors. We need to understand that communication if we want to be able to address most diseases or disorders.

The CCRC, I argue, is probably the best for accounting for how the glycan code impacts cell-cell communication. Regarding the technologies needed for reading these complex carbohydrates, UGA is definitely the best in the United States, if not the best in the world.

Read the full interview.