Diversity in Life Sciences

Dr.  Oleta Johnson earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in 2013. In 2014, she joined the lab of Professor Amanda Garner at University of Michigan and developed chemical tools to study the conformational plasticity of an intrinsically disorder protein (IDP), 4E-BP1, and earned her PhD in Chemical Biology from University of Michigan in 2018. Dr. Johnson continued utilizing chemical tools to understand the relationship between protein dynamics and function as postdoctoral researcher with Professor Jason Gestwicki at University of California, San Francisco. In the Gestwicki Lab, she used chemical probes to study the mechanisms employed by molecular chaperone proteins to maintain protein homeostasis. Dr. Johnson’s research program at MIT is rooted in her unique expertise, using chemical and biophysical tools to dissect the relationship between protein dynamics and function. Specifically, the Johnson Lab uses chemistry and biophysics to understand and tune molecular chaperone protein DnaJB6 and its ability to suppress the toxic accumulation of proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s Disease and Parkinson’s disease.