Dr. Bruce Goode

Principal Investigator

Bruce was raised in the bay area of Northern California. He began his collegiate studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he earned a B.S. in 1988. He stayed at UCSB for graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Stuart Feinstein and earned a Ph.D. in 1995. His graduate work defined the microtubule binding sites on the neuronal specific, and Alzheimer's disease-relevant, protein tau (Goode et al., 1990, 1994, 1997, 2000).

Bruce moved back to the bay area for his post-doctoral studies at the University of California Berkeley with Dr. David Drubin and Dr. Georjana Barnes. His initial goal was to identify cellular factors that link the functions of the microtubule and actin cytoskeletons in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Starting from crude cell extracts, he used actin and microtubule affinity columns and tandem mass spectrometry to isolate and identify new components of the yeast cytoskeleton. One of these, twinfilin, turned out to be the founding member of a highly conserved family of actin monomer sequestering proteins that regulates actin turnover (Goode et al., 1998). A second was the yeast homologue of the actin filament-binding protein coronin (Goode et al., 1999). In his last year in Berkeley, Bruce developed an assay to reconstitute actin assembly in yeast cell extracts. This enabled the first isolation of native mixtures of yeast actin and actin-associated proteins, opening the door to identifying new activities and cellular functions. The first discovery stemming from these breakthroughs was the identification of Abp1 as an activator of the Arp2/3 complex (Goode et al., 2001).

Bruce crossed coasts in July 2000 to join the faculty at Brandeis University as an assistant professor of Biology and the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center. His lab used the cell-free actin assembly assay to launch multi-disciplinary studies (biochemical, cell, genetic, and structural) into three major areas of actin regulation: (1) actin nucleation by the Arp2/3 complex and its regulators; (2) actin nucleation by formins and its regulators; and (3) actin turnover by cofilin, Srv2/CAP, and Aip1.

Bruce has taught graduate level cell biology and proseminar as well as introductory cell biology for freshmen and sophomores majoring in the life sciences. When he is not torturing his graduate students and post-docs, Bruce enjoys running, cooking, playing guitar and spending time with his wife Avi, son Simon, and two dogs Sasha and Kira.