Rate My Professor Ross Buchan

J. Ross Buchan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona, holding additional associate professor appointments in Neuroscience, Genetics GIDP, Cancer Biology GIDP, and the BIO5 Institute. He joined the university in 2014 as an Assistant Professor after completing postdoctoral research with Roy Parker at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Buchan obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Aberdeen in 2006 in Ian Stansfield’s laboratory, where he also earned his B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. During his postdoctoral training, he held HHMI fellowships from 2006 to 2013 and developed bioinformatic approaches to study tRNA evolutionary pressures and codon usage, discovered stress granules in yeast, and demonstrated that P-bodies serve as nucleating sites for stress granule assembly.

The Buchan laboratory investigates RNA biology and proteostasis using yeast genetics, human cell lines, and genetic, cell biological, and biochemical methods. Research centers on the dynamics, composition, function, and clearance mechanisms of mRNA-protein foci such as P-bodies and stress granules, which regulate translational control, mRNA decay, localization, and stress responses. Current projects explore autophagy and endocytic pathways in stress granule clearance, TDP-43 turnover in ALS pathology, and mRNA 3’UTR scaffolding of protein interactions. Key publications include “Eukaryotic stress granules: the ins and outs of translation” (Molecular Cell, 2009), “Eukaryotic stress granules are cleared by autophagy and Cdc48/VCP function” (Cell, 2013), “P bodies promote stress granule assembly in Saccharomyces cerevisiae” (Journal of Cell Biology, 2008), “Endocytosis regulates TDP-43 toxicity and turnover” (Nature Communications, 2017), and “mRNP granules. Assembly, function, and connections with disease” (RNA Biology, 2014). His contributions have elucidated mRNP cycles influencing gene expression and disease mechanisms. The lab includes a postdoctoral researcher, an assistant staff scientist, four graduate students, and four undergraduates.