Deborah C. I. Goberdhan
Oxford cell biologist who studies how amino acid transporters and the cell's secretory compartments control growth signalling, often using the fruit fly, and who argued that intracellular transporters mark where mTORC1 is switched on
Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford (2025–2026) · Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford (papers to 2025)
mTORC1, the cell's growth-control complex, is switched on by amino acids, but where in the cell does that happen? In a 2016 review in Cell Metabolism (GOB2016), written with Adrian Harris, Deborah Goberdhan argued that amino acid transporters sitting in the membranes of compartments inside the cell, such as late endosomes, lysosomes and the Golgi apparatus, mark the spots where mTORC1 is activated. The review proposed that different amino acids in different compartments may switch on different pools of mTORC1. It is a synthesis of existing evidence, not a new experiment.
Goberdhan has worked for many years in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford, often with Clive Wilson, and has more than 50 papers in PubMed. The work moves between fly genetics and human cancer. With Harris, Goberdhan's group reported in 2020 that the glutamine transporter SNAT2 helps triple-negative breast cancer cells resist oxidative stress and is linked to worse survival. Goberdhan was also a co-author of MISEV2018, the international guidelines for research on extracellular vesicles, the small membrane packets that cells release.
More recent papers use the prostate-like secondary cells of male fruit flies to watch secretion live. A 2025 study in The EMBO Journal showed that the Alzheimer's protein APP and amyloid-beta disturb how dense-core secretory granules form in recycling endosomes, and a 2026 review proposed that faulty regulated secretion might start Alzheimer's pathology. These papers list Goberdhan at the Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health at Oxford.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | R | Amino Acid Sensing by mTORC1: Intracellular Transporters Mark the Spot GOB2016 First author: proposed in a review that amino acid transporters inside the cell mark the sites where mTORC1 is activated. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Deborah C. I. Goberdhan.
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- Adrian L. Harris Medical oncologist who studies hypoxia, tumour blood-vessel growth and the metabolic response of breast cancer cells.
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