UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry : UCLA Portal

Website:

Jorge Torres's Home Page.

Email Address:

torres@chem.ucla.edu

Laboratory Address:

Young Hall 5110

Work Address:

Young Hall 5072C

Work Phone Number:

1 (310) 206-2092

Assistant Professor
Biochemistry

Member
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (BMB) Graduate Program

A Short Biography:

Dr. Torres received his B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1998, where he conducted research under the mentorship of Dr. Eduardo Orias. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University in 2004 under the direction of Dr. Virginia A. Zakian. He conducted his postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Peter K. Jackson at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Genentech Inc. until 2009 when he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA.

Dr. Torres accepts graduate students through the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) Graduate Program and the UCLA ACCESS Ph.D. Program.

Awards and Honors:

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2005 ; Stanford University Cancer Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2004 ; Leadership Alliance/Schering-Plough Fellowship, 2003 ; Princeton University Molecular Biology Teaching Award, 1999 ; Ford Baccalaureate Incentive Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research, 1998 ; UCSB Department of MCDB Graduation Commencement Speaker, 1998

Research Interest:

The lab's major focus is to understand how multiple mechanisms and enzymatic activities coordinate the formation of the mitotic microtubule spindle during cell division. We are interested in identifying and characterizing novel proteins that are required for proper mitotic spindle assembly. Among these are molecular motors, phosphatases, methyltranferases, and ubiquitin ligases. We use human cell lines and in vitro systems along with a combination of approaches, including biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, chemical biology, and microscopy to determine the mechanism of action of these proteins.

Publications:

Torres Jorge Z, Miller Julie J, Jackson Peter K High-throughput generation of tagged stable cell lines for proteomic analysis. Proteomics, 2009; 9(10): 2888-91.

Ban Kenneth H, Torres Jorge Z, Miller Julie J, Mikhailov Alexei, Nachury Maxence V, Tung Jeffrey J, Rieder Conly L, Jackson Peter K The END network couples spindle pole assembly to inhibition of the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome in early mitosis. Developmental cell, 2007; 13(1): 29-42.

Azvolinsky Anna, Dunaway Stephen, Torres Jorge Z, Bessler Jessica B, Zakian Virginia A The S. cerevisiae Rrm3p DNA helicase moves with the replication fork and affects replication of all yeast chromosomes. Genes & development, 2006; 20(22): 3104-16.

Torres Jorge Z, Schnakenberg Sandra L, Zakian Virginia A Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rrm3p DNA helicase promotes genome integrity by preventing replication fork stalling: viability of rrm3 cells requires the intra-S-phase checkpoint and fork restart activities. Molecular and cellular biology, 2004; 24(8): 3198-212.

Torres Jorge Z, Bessler Jessica B, Zakian Virginia A Local chromatin structure at the ribosomal DNA causes replication fork pausing and genome instability in the absence of the S. cerevisiae DNA helicase Rrm3p. Genes & development, 2004; 18(5): 498-503.

Bessler J.B., Torres J.Z., and Zakian V.A. The Pif1p subfamily of helicases: region-specific DNA helicases? Trends in Cell Biology, 2001; 11(2): 60-65.