Meredith Jackrel graduated from the College of New Jersey with a BS in Chemistry in 2004. She then attended Yale University where she joined Lynne Regan’s laboratory in the Departments of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Chemistry. There she studied protein – protein interactions. Her work focused on tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) proteins and she designed new protein – peptide binding pairs. She also developed a split-GFP reassembly assay. Meredith received her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2010.
In 2010, Meredith joined James Shorter’s laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral fellow. There she developed techniques to re-engineer the protein disaggregase, Hsp104, to counter protein misfolding implicated in ALS and Parkinson’s disease. She was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association. She was also awarded a Target ALS Springboard Fellowship to support her transition to an independent faculty position.
In 2017, Meredith became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. There her group studies protein misfolding and approaches to reverse misfolding. Her independent research program has been recognized with awards from the Frick Foundation for ALS Research, the ALS Association, the American Heart Association, and the NIH.