Principal Investigator, Linus Pauling Institute
Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Contact:
351 LPSC
[email protected]
Alysia Vrailas-Mortimer earned her B.S. in Biology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and was an NIH pre-IRTA fellow for a post-bac in cancer biology. She received her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory University, where she also completed her postdoctoral fellowship in aging and physiology. She was an assistant professor at the University of Denver before moving to Illinois State University as an assistant professor and later as an associate professor. Dr. Vrailas-Mortimer is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and a Principal Investigator at the Linus Pauling Institute. In addition to her research on the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to aging and diseases of aging, she is also involved in STEM education research.
Research Interests
Dr. Vrailas-Mortimer’s research focuses on understanding how genes and environmental factors like pesticides and heavy metals contribute to aging and age-related diseases using the model system Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly). Flies have proven to be an exceedingly effective system for studying these questions as fly models of human diseases often behave similarly to human patients. In addition, flies are a fantastic genetic system that allows for the exploration of how genes interact with each other as well as environmental factors to influence a disease state. Dr. Vrailas-Mortimer uses a combination of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry and behavioral assays to test how manipulating aging genes and/or exposure to environmental factors affects the fly at the cellular, tissue, and whole organism level.
Education
- B.S., Biology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Ph.D., Genetics and Molecular Biology, Emory University
- Post-Doc, Aging and Physiology, Emory University
Featured Publications
Ryan SM, Almassey M, Burch AM, Ngo G, Martin JM, Myers D, Compton D, Archie S, Cross M, Naeger L, Salzman A, Virola-Iaruss A, Barbee SA, Mortimer NT, Sanyal S, Vrailas-Mortimer A. (2021) Drosophila p38 MAPK interacts with BAG-3/starvin to regulate age-dependent protein homeostasis. Aging Cell. 20(11):e13481. doi: 10.1111/acel.13481.
Ryan SM, Wildman K, Oceguera-Perez B, Barbee S, Mortimer NT, Vrailas-Mortimer A. (2020) Evolutionarily conserved transcription factors drive the oxidative stress response in Drosophila. J Exp Biol. 223(Pt 14):jeb221622. doi: 10.1242/jeb.221622.
Lane AR, Scher NE, Bhattacharjee S, Zlatic SA, Roberts AM, Gokhale A, Singleton KS, Duong DM, McKenna M, Liu WL, Baiju A, Rivera Moctezuma FG, Tran T, Patel AA, Clayton LB, Petris MJ, Wood LB, Patgiri A, Vrailas-Mortimer AD, Cox DN, Roberts BR, Werner E, Faundez V. (2025) Adaptive protein synthesis in genetic models of copper deficiency and childhood neurodegeneration. Mol Cell Bio. Jan 29:mbcE24110512. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E24-11-0512.
Comstra HS, McArthy J, Rudin-Rush S, Hartwig C, Gokhale A, Zlatic SA, Blackburn JB, Werner E, Petris M, D’Souza P, Panuwet P, Boyd Barr D, Lupashin V, Vrailas-Mortimer A, Faundez V. (2017) The interactome of the copper transporter ATP7A belongs to a network of neurodevelopmental and neurodegeneration factors. Elife. 6:e24722. doi: 10.7554/eLife.24722.
Merkle JA, Devergne O, Kelly SM, Croonquist PA, Evans CJ, Hwalek MA, Straub VL, Hamill DR, Peister A, Puthoff DP, Saville KJ, Siders JL, Villanueva Gonzalez ZJ, Wittke-Thompson JK, Bieser KL, Stamm J, Vrailas-Mortimer AD, Kagey JD. (2023) Fly-CURE, a multi-institutional CURE using Drosophila, increases students' confidence, sense of belonging, and persistence in research. J Microbiol Biol Educ. 24(3):e00245-22. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.00245-22.