- ahussein(at)uw.edu
Departments
Biochemistry, Biochemistry Graduate Program
Roles
Mr. Abdiasis is a PhD candidate in the department of biochemistry performing his thesis research in the laboratory of Professor Hannele Ruohola-Baker. He previously studied an intermediate pluripotent step, embryonic diapause, which disrupts the transition from the pre-implantation naïve to post-implantation primed embryonic. He foun that diapause has a distinct lipid metabolic profile compared to the pre- implantation blastocyst. Importantly, lipolysis is upregulated reducing the storage components, triacylglycerols (TAGs) and diacylglycerols (DAGs) and increasing the accumulation of fatty acids (FA) and phosphatidylcholine (PC) possibly for survival. He has shown that mTOR2 pathway downregulation is critical for this metabolic change since Rictor mouse embryonic stem cell (mESC) mutants show similar metabolic remodeling. In addition to metabolic changes, he has shown that diapause is accompanied with epigenetic remodeling; diapause embryos lack the epigenetic mark of transcriptionally active cells, H4K16 acetylation. Epigenetic alteration and remodeling has been shown to be a hallmark of quiescent stem cell states. His main focus now is to dissect the mechanism of action of key epigenetic regulators in ESC quiescence. Outside of the lab, Abdiasis loves to play soccer.
