Rebecca’s work focuses on the impact of genetic variation on cellular stress, metabolism, and disease phenotypes. Rebecca has studied the impact of environment and genetic mutation on metabolism in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and characterized the role of the Drosophila sir2 in regulating cellular metabolism and physiology. She found that loss of this deacetylase is associated with progressive hyperglycemia, obesity, and insulin resistance. She also described a transgenerational effect of genetically induced parental obesity on progeny metabolic homeostasis through the F2 generation.
Rebecca now focuses on the impact of genetic variation on phenotypic penetrance and expressivity. She is working on characterizing several modifiers of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced retinal degeneration, as well as their roles in other tissues and related diseases. One of these modifiers is the ER associated fatty acid elongase Baldspot/ELOVL6, loss of which leads to reduced ER stress and apoptosis, and therefore reduced degeneration. She found that Baldspot regulates ER stress is a variety of different tissues regardless of the method of stress induction, marking this enzyme as a valuable potential target for therapeutic development in diverse ER stress-related disorders. Rebecca plans to extend her work in these fields, studying how genetic variation impacts cellular metabolism and physiology under a variety of dietary and genetic stresses.