Audrey Gasch
Position title: Professor
Email: agasch@wisc.edu
Phone: 608-265-0859
Address:
Medical Genetics
Elucidating the role, regulation, and evolution of eukaryotic stress responses
- Address
- 3422 Genetics/Biotech
- Education
- Ph.D. (2000) Stanford University, Postdoctoral Research: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/University of California, Berkeley, 2000-2003
- Lab Website
- http://gasch.genetics.wisc.edu/
- Department
- Genetics
- Research Interests
- Elucidating the role, regulation, and evolution of eukaryotic stress responses.
- Research Fields
- Computational, Systems & Synthetic Biology, Evolutionary & Population Genetics, Gene Expression, Genomics & Proteomics, Fungi

Research Description:
All organisms must be able to sense and respond to their environment and defend themselves against environmental stress. Cells respond to acute environmental stress by mounting a multi-faceted cellular response that typically includes coordinated changes in transcription and translation, protein function, and metabolic fluxes, along with transient arrest of growth and cell cycle progression. How these disparate physiological processes are coordinated is poorly understood but likely critical for surviving and acclimating to stressful conditions.
The Gasch Lab uses modern techniques in comparative and functional genomics, computational and systems biology, and genetics and molecular biology to study how cells sense their environment, detect when there is a problem, and then coordinate a multi-faceted response to protect themselves. We study these topics in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model for basic biology. Because defects in sensing and responding to cellular stress are linked to many human diseases, and because much of yeast physiology is similar to human cells, our research is generating important insights into how normal cells function and when problems cause disease.
We are also interested in the relationship between genotype and phenotype, and how environmental responses evolve in natural populations. We study these questions at a mechanistic level in wild isolates of budding yeast. We also leverage evolution and natural diversity to engineer new traits aimed at producing sustainable and economical biofuels from cellulosic materials. As part of the DOE-funded Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), our lab is addressing critical bottlenecks in microbial fuel and chemical production.
Representative Publications:
Search PubMed for more publications by Audrey Gasch
Natural variation in the consequences of gene over-expression and its implications for evolutionary trajectories. Robinson D, Place M, Hose J, Jochem A, Gasch AP. Elife. 2021 Aug 2;10:e70564.
The genetic basis of aneuploidy tolerance in wild yeast. Hose J, Escalante LE, Clowers KJ, Dutcher HA, Robinson D, Bouriakov V, Coon JJ, Shishkova E, Gasch AP. Elife. 2020 Jan 7;9:e52063.
Phosphoproteome Response to Dithiothreitol Reveals Unique Versus Shared Features of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Stress Responses. MacGilvray ME, Shishkova E, Place M, Wagner ER, Coon JJ, Gasch AP. J Proteome Res. 2020 Aug 7;19(8):3405-3417.
Decoupling Yeast Cell Division and Stress Defense Implicates mRNA Repression in Translational Reallocation during Stress. Ho YH, Shishkova E, Hose J, Coon JJ, Gasch AP. Curr Biol. 2018 Aug 20;28(16):2673-2680.e4.
Network inference reveals novel connections in pathways regulating growth and defense in the yeast salt response. MacGilvray ME, Shishkova E, Chasman D, Place M, Gitter A, Coon JJ, Gasch AP. PLoS Comput Biol. 2018 May 8;13(5):e1006088. doi:
Pathway connectivity and signaling coordination in the yeast stress-activated signaling network. Chasman D, Ho YH, Berry DB, Nemec CM, MacGilvray ME, Hose J, Merrill AE, Lee MV, Will JL, Coon JJ, Ansari AZ, Craven M, Gasch AP. Molecular Systems Biol. 2014 Nov 19;10:759.