Dr. Whitwam investigates the spontaneous formation of yeast prions, focusing on the [URE3] prion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Prions are infectious proteins that can induce other copies of the same protein to misfold and aggregate into amyloids. The yeast prion [URE3] can also misfold spontaneously into its prion conformation at a low rate. Dr. Whitwam’s lab investigates how cellular factors, such as chaperone protein expression, can alter the rate of spontaneous prion formation as a means of investigating molecular mechanisms that might impact the prevalence of mammalian prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, fatal familial insomnia, and others.