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Pathology

Houston, Texas

Department of Pathology
Pathology
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Faculty

Richard N. Sifers , Ph. D.Associate Professor of Pathology

Dr. Sifers Collage

Education

  • Ph.D. University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK
  • B.S. Missouri Western State University, St. Joseph, MO

Training

Post-doctoral Training

  • Department of Cell Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
  • Specialty: Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Genetics

Area of Interest

  • Glycobiology
  • The secretory pathway
  • Protein biosynthetic quality control
  • Conformational disease
  • Alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency
  • Disease modifiers

Current Position

  • Department of Pathology
  • Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
  • Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
  • Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology
  • Medical Scientist Training Program
  • Program in Translational Biology and Molecular Medicine
  • Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Biophysics
  • Digestive Disease Center
  • Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center
  • Center for Liver Diseases
  • Human Genome Sequencing Center
  • Summer Medical and Research Training (SMART) Steering Committee

Professional Positions Held

  • Grant Reviewer:
  • NIH, Hemostasis and Thrombosis (HT) Study Section
  • NIH Intercellular Interactions (ICI) Study Section
  • The Wellcome Trust
  • The Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Grant Review Program
  • Peer Review Committee, American Heart Association
  • The Alpha-1 Foundation
  • Medical Research Council (MRC) of Britain , Molecular and Cellular Medicine
  • Medical Research Council of Canada
  • Italian Telethon
  • The Israel Science Foundation
  • United States-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation
  • Swiss National Science Foundation
  • The Children's Research Center-Charitable Trust, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children
  • Non-Profit organization membership:
  • Alpha1-Foundation Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee
  • Alpha 1-Foundation Educational Materials Working Group
  • Alpha1-Foundation Liver Task Force
  • Teaching:
  • “Organization of the Cell” graduate level course (co-Director and team teacher)
  • “Structure of Macromolecules”, graduate level course (team teacher)
  • “Foundations of Basic Science to the Science of Medicine: Core Concepts”
  • Medical school course (team teacher)
  • “Pathophysiology and Mechanisms of Human Disease”, graduate level course (team teacher)

Other Positions

Honors and Awards

  • Regents and Trustees Special Honor Scholarship, Missouri Western State University
  • NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, “Alpha1-antitrypsin Deficiency”
  • American Lung Association Research Career Investigator Award
  • Distinguished Guest Lecturer, Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation
  • Distinguished Guest Lecturer, University of Miami Medical School
  • “Best Course” Award, “Organization of the Cell”
  • “Best Lecturer” Award

Membership on professional organizations

  • Basic Science Council
  • American Heart Association
  • American Society for Cell Biology
  • American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  • American Society for Human Genetics
  • New York Academy of Sciences
  • American Chemical Society with IUPAC
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • The Protein Society
  • Society for Glycobiology

Representative Publications

  1. Liu Y, Choudhury P, Cabral CM and Sifers RN. (1999). Oligosaccharide modification in the early secretory pathway directs the selection of a misfolded glycoprotein for degradation by the proteasome. J. Biol. Chem. 274: 5861-5867.
  2. Cabral CM, Choudhury P, Liu Y and Sifers RN. (2000). Processing by endoplasmic reticulum mannosidases partitions a secretion-impaired glycoprotein into distinct disposal pathways. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 25015-25022.
  3. Cabral CM, Liu Y, and Sifers RN. (2001). Dissecting glycoprotein quality control in the secretory pathway. Trends Bioch. Sci. 26, 619-624.
  4. Cabral CM, Liu Y, Moremen KW and Sifers RN. (2002). Organizational diversity among distinct glycoprotein ER-associated degradation programs. Mol. Biol. Cell. 13:2639-2650.
  5. Sifers RN. (2003). Protein degradation unlocked. Science 299:1330-1331.
  6. Wu Y, Swulius MT, Moremen KW and Sifers RN. (2003). Elucidation of the molecular logic that preferentially targets misfolded alpha1-antitrypsin for intracellular degradation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 8229-8234.
  7. Sifers, R.N. (2004). Insights into checkpoint capacity. Nature Struct. & Mol. Biol 11:108-109.
  8. Termine, D., Wu, Y., Liu, Y. and Sifers. R.N . (2005) Alpha1-antitrypsin as a model for glycan function in the endoplasmic reticulum. METHODS 35(4):348-353.
  9. Mast, S.W., Diekman, K., Davis , A.W., Karaveg, K., Sifers, R.N . and Moremen, K.W. (2005). Human EDEM2, a novel homolog of family 47 glycosidases, is involved in ER-associated degradation of glycoproteins. Glycobiology 15:421-436.
  10. Wu, Y., Termine, D.J., Swulius, M.T., Moremen, K.W., and Sifers, R.N. (2007). Human endoplasmic reticulum mannosidase I is subject to regulated proteolysis. J. Biol. Chem, 282;4841-4849.