The Villen Lab seeks to develop and apply novel technologies for proteome characterization to answer fundamental questions in cell biology and disease. We use quantitative mass spectrometry to measure dynamic changes in protein abundances, protein post-translational modification states, and to characterize interaction partners across multiple cellular states.

We are particularly interested in studying protein phosphorylation as a general regulatory mechanism in the cell involved in a myriad of functions: how phosphorylation is integrated into the multiple responses to shape the proteome, and how signaling circuits evolved to accommodate proteome functional complexity.