Alicia Meléndez

Developmental geneticist at Queens College, CUNY, who showed as a postdoc in Beth Levine's lab that autophagy genes are needed for the long life of insulin-signalling mutant worms. Her lab studies autophagy in C. elegans development, from germline stem cells to meiosis

Professor, Department of Biology, Queens College, CUNY · Director, Office of Undergraduate Research, Queens College (since 2023) · postdoc with Beth Levine and before that with Iva Greenwald, Columbia University · PhD in Biology, Columbia University (Daniel Kalderon lab) · BA, Princeton University

Meléndez Lab, Department of Biology, Queens College, City University of New York (New York, New York, USA) ↗

In 2003, working in Beth Levine's lab at Columbia University, Alicia Meléndez was first author of a Science paper (MEL2003) that tied autophagy, the cell's self-recycling system, to lifespan in an animal. The roundworm C. elegans lives much longer when its insulin-like signalling is turned down by mutations in the receptor gene daf-2. When bec-1, the worm version of the autophagy gene beclin 1, was switched off in these long-lived worms, they lost their extra lifespan. They also could not properly form dauer larvae, a tough resting stage that young worms enter when food is short.

Why does this matter for mTOR? mTORC1, the cell's growth-control complex, is one of the main brakes on autophagy, and several ways of extending lifespan in animals, from eating less to taking rapamycin, switch autophagy on. This paper was among the first to show that autophagy is required for a genetic lifespan extension, not just present alongside it. The work was done in worms, so it shows a mechanism in one animal rather than an effect in people.

Meléndez did her undergraduate thesis with Eric Wieschaus at Princeton University and earned a PhD in Biology at Columbia University with Daniel Kalderon. She was a postdoc with Iva Greenwald at Columbia before moving to Levine's lab to study autophagy in worms. Her own lab at Queens College, City University of New York, studies the role of autophagy in C. elegans development, with a focus on germline stem cell proliferation and the accuracy of meiosis, the cell division that makes eggs and sperm. She is a Professor of Biology and since 2023 also directs the college's Office of Undergraduate Research.

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