• Title Assistant Professor
    Director for Analytics & Admissions, GMS
  • Education PhD: University of Cologne, Germany
    Postdoctoral training:: McGill University
  • Office L317-G
  • Phone 617-358-9547
  • Area of Interest Receptor trafficking in health and disease

Dr. Ritter is currently the Director for Analytics & Admissions in GMS.

Her research interests and expertise is in intracellular receptor sorting controls basic cellular functions such as nutrient uptake and signaling as well as complex behaviors such as migration, differentiation and tissue morphogenesis. Accordingly, the proteins and mechanisms involved in the various sorting pathways are key to normal cell physiology and their misregulation directly contributes to human disease.

Her laboratory focused on clathrin-mediated sorting events and the regulation of these events by the NECAP protein family. NECAP1 controls the composition of the endocytic clathrin machinery to ensure normal vesicle formation and receptor internalization at the plasma membrane. In addition, NECAP1 is critical for synaptic vesicle recycling in primary neurons and a loss-of-function mutation in NECAP1 (EIEE21) has recently been identified as a heritable genetic cause of Ohtahara Syndrome/Early Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathy (EIEE). NECAP2  is not involved in clathrin-mediated endocytosis but instead controls the recycling of receptors from early endosomes to the cell surface. Since endosomal sorting pathways are still some of the least understood, we are now using NECAP2 to define the proteins and mechanisms involved in the regulation of receptor recycling and to understand the importance of this pathway for cell function.

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