The Crowder lab is interested in the genetic determinants of cellular injury after environmental stress. We are focused on two cell stresses: hypoxia and general anesthetics.

• Cell death after hypoxia in the form of heart attacks and strokes is the number one cause of mortality in the United States. And, resistance to hypoxic cell death is a significant contributor to cancer cell metastasis and tumor growth.
• There is an increasing body of evidence that general anesthetics may be cytotoxic. Neurons, in particular, appear to be susceptible to anesthetic toxicity

We utilize the genetically tractable organism Caenorhabditis elegans, a soil nematode, as our primary model, identifying a variety of genes that control survival after hypoxic injury, such as growth factor receptors and general protein homeostasis factors. Hypoxia induces protein misfolding. Prevention and response to these misfolded proteins appears to be important for hypoxic survival.