Scott E. Lindner

About Scott

Dr. Scott E. Lindner was born and raised in Chicagoland. He did his undergraduate training at the Florida Institute of Technology (Melbourne, FL), which is far warmer than Chicago in the winter. Dr. Lindner then completed his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is slightly colder than Chicago in the winter. Dr. Lindner conducted post-doctoral training in x-ray crystallography (University of Wisconsin-Madison), as well as molecular parasitology at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, which is far rainier than Chicago. Since 2013, Dr. Lindner has been a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State University in State College, PA, which he finds to be a lovely place to live and work.

Training

Florida Institute of Technology - BS Molecular Biology (1997-2001)
University of Wisconsin - PhD Cancer Biology (2001-2006), Post-Doctoral Fellow (2007-2009)
Seattle Biomedical Research Institute - Post-Doctoral Fellow (2009-2012), Staff Scientist (2012-2013)
Pennsylvania State University - MBA, Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2021-2024)

Leadership (2024-2025)

• President-Elect - American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene - American Committee of Molecular, Cellular, and ImmunoParasitology (ACMCIP) Subgroup
• Executive Committee - Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD)
• Co-Director - Huck Center for Malaria Research (CMaR)

Service (2024-2025)

• Federal Demonstration Partnership, US National Academies - Penn State Faculty Representative
• Schreyer Honors College - Honors Advisor (BMB)
• Biotechnology Curriculum and Assessment Committee - Member (BMB)
• BMMB Graduate Student Admissions - Member (BMB)

Program or Department Affiliations

Centers

Research Summary

Our laboratory couples molecular parasitology and structural biology to study the malaria parasite (Plasmodium spp.). Malaria is still one of the great global health challenges today. Conservative estimates from the World Health Organization indicate that, every year, about 200 million people become infected, with over 0.5 million people dying from their infection. Most of these fatalities disproportionately affect pregnant women and kids under the age of 5 in the Global South.

Significant efforts have been made to develop new drugs and vaccines. However, the mounting resistance to these drugs and the limited efficacy of the current generation of vaccines have not allowed us to meet the goals of malaria elimination and eradication.

In response to this, our laboratory conducts Discovery Phase research using the mouse-infective malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii that focuses on crucial aspects of the parasite’s growth, development, and transmission. We focus on essential processes during bottlenecks of the parasite’s life cycle, with a special emphasis on translational control of mRNAs across transmission events and the use of specialized ribosomes to drive cellular growth, development, and differentiation decisions.

Selected Publications

Rios, K.T., McGee, J.P., Sebastian, A., Gedara, S.A., Moritz, R.L., Feric, M., Absalon, S., Swearingen, K.E., & Lindner, S.E. 
"Widespread Release of Translational Repression Across Plasmodium’s Host-to-Vector Transmission Event." 
PLOS Pathogens. 2025 Jan 8: 21(1):e102823. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1012823

Patel, D.R., Minns, A.M., Sim, D.G., Field, C.F., Kerr, A.E., Heinly, T., Luley, E.H., Rossi, R.M., Bator, C., Mostafa, I.M., Norton, E.B., Hafenstein, S.L., Lindner, S.E. # & Sutton, T.C.# 
"Intranasal SARS-CoV-2 RBD decorated nanoparticle vaccine enhances viral clearance in the Syrian hamster model." (# co-corresponding authors) 
Microbiology Spectrum. 2024 Mar 5; 12(3):e0499822. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.04998-22. Epub 2024 Feb 9.
*Press release
*Animation for Public Engagement

Godin, M.J.*, Sebastian, A.*, Albert, I#, & Lindner, S.E.# 
“Long-Read Genome Assembly and Gene Model Annotations for the Rodent Malaria Parasite Plasmodium yoelii 17XNL” 
Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2023 May 27: 104871. doi: 10.1016/j.jbc.2023.104871. 
(* equal contribution, # co-corresponding authors)

McGee, J.M., Armache, J.P., & Lindner, S.E. 
"Specialized Ribosomes of Plasmodium Parasites"
PLoS Pathogens. 2023 Apr 13;19(4):e1011267. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1011267.

Hart, K.J., Power, B.J.*, Rios, K.T.*, Sebastian, A., & Lindner, S.E. 
"The Plasmodium NOT1-G paralogue is an essential regulator of sexual stage maturation and parasite transmission." 
PLoS Biology. 2021 Oct 21: 19(10):e3001434. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001434 (* equal contribution)

Rios, K.T. & Lindner S.E. 
"Protein-RNA Interactions Important for Plasmodium Transmission." 
PLoS Pathogens. 2019 Dec 26; 15(12):e1008095. doi: 10.1371/journal/ppat.1008095.

Lindner, S.E.*,#, Swearingen, K.E.*, Shears, M., Walker, M.P., Vrana, E., Hart, K.J., Minns, A.M., Sinnis, P., Moritz, R., & Kappe, S.# 
"Transcriptomics and proteomics reveal two waves of translational repression during the maturation of malaria parasite sporozoites." 
Nature Communications. 2019 Oct 31; 10(1):4964. doi: 10.1038/s42467-019-12936-6. (* equal contribution, # joint supervision/co-corresponding authors)

Lee, M., Lindner, S.E., Marco-Rubio, J.J., & Llinás, M. 
"Cutting back malaria: CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing of Plasmodium." 
Briefings in Functional Genomics. 2019 Jul 29; 1-9. doi: 10.1093/bfgp/elz012.

Hart, K.J., Oberstaller, J., Walker, M.P., Minns, A.M., Kennedy, M., Padykula, I., Adams, J., & Lindner, S.E. 
"Plasmodium male gametocyte development and transmission are critically regulated by the two putative deadenylases of the CAF1/CCR4/NOT Complex." 
PLoS Pathogens. 2019 Jan 31; 15(1):e1007164. 1-28.

Swearingen, K.E. & Lindner S.E. 
"Plasmodium Parasites Viewed Through Proteomics" 
Trends in Parasitology. 2018 Nov; 37(11): 945-960. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2018.08.003.
**Featured as the Cover Image/Publication for November 2018

Swearingen, K.E.*, Lindner, S.E.*, Shi, L., Shears, M.J., Harupa, A., Hopp, C.S., Vaughan, A.M., Springer, T.A., Moritz, R.L., Kappe, S.H., & Sinnis, P. 
"Interrogating the Plasmodium Sporozoite Surface: Identification of Surface-Exposed Proteins and Demonstration of Glycosylation on CSP and TRAP by Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics." 
PLoS Pathogens. 2016 Apr 29; 12(4):e1005606. 1-32. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005606. (* equal contribution) 
**Recognized as one of the "Top 50 Most Downloaded" articles of the year for PLoS Pathogens

Reddy, B.P.N., Shrestha, S., Hart, K.J., Liang, X., Kemirembe, K., Cui, L., & Lindner, S.E. 
"A bioinformatic survey of RNA-binding proteins in Plasmodium." 
BMC Genomics. 2015 Nov 2; 16:890. 1-26. doi: 10.1186/s12864-015-2092-1
 

• To view a complete list of publications for Dr. Scott Lindner, visit his Penn State PURE Page or his NCBI My Bibliography Page.

Honors or Awards