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Elizabeth Wasmuth, PhD

Assistant Professor

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar

Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UTHSA Cryo-EM Lab, and Co-Director of the Mays Cancer Center Structural Biology Shared Resource

Currently seeking Ph.D. students

Dr. Elizabeth Wasmuth is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology and co-Director of the cryo-electron microscopy facility at University of Texas Health at San Antonio. She has a long-standing interest in how macromolecular protein complexes recognize and modify their nucleic acid ligands in normal and cancerous cells. She performed her doctoral work in the lab of Dr. Christopher Lima at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she applied a combination of biochemistry and X-ray crystallography to discover how the essential multisubunit RNA turnover complex called the RNA exosome coordinates its various activities to commit to either RNA trimming or decay. She completed her post-doctoral training under the joint mentorship of Dr. Charles Sawyers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. Sebastian Klinge at the Rockefeller University, where she pioneered means to isolate and biochemically characterize the androgen receptor (AR), the master regulator of male development and primary drug target in prostate cancer. Using cryo-electron microscopy, she defined how intrinsic flexibility of AR dimers contributes to an enhanced repertoire of AR binding sites in cancer. Her laboratory continues to answer long-standing problems in AR biology, including how the receptors self-regulate and are modulated by protein cofactors to alter lineage-specific gene expression programs in various stages of development and disease. To accomplish these goals, Dr. Wasmuth's laboratory utilizes a combination of reconstitution biochemistry, biophysics, proteomics, and structural biology. 

As part of her recruitment to UT Health San Antonio, Dr. Wasmuth received a CPRIT First Time Tenure Track Award and a UT STARs Award. She was named the 2024 Abeloff V Scholar by the V Foundation, and is a member of the 2025 class of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholars.

Dr. Wasmuth is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UTHSA Cryo-EM Lab, and Co-Director of the Mays Cancer Center Structural Biology Shared Resource.

 

 

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