Research

Our lab studies novel (non-chromosomal) agents of genetic constancy and change and the mechanisms by which organisms and cells respond to such agents.

The genetic landscape faced by a living cell is constantly changing. Developmental transitions, environmental shifts, and pathogenic invasions lend a dynamic character to both the genome and its activity pattern.  We study a variety of genetic change agents, as well as the natural mechanisms that are utilized by cells adapting to such agents. The change agents include a panoply of previously (and often still) uncharacterized DNA and RNA elements that straddle boundaries between genome, virome, and mobilome. The corresponding propagation and control mechanisms likewise span a spectrum between systems activated during normal development and systems for detecting and responding to foreign or unwanted genetic activity. At the root of these studies are searches for unexpected genetic and genomic entities and questions of how a cell can distinguish "self" versus "nonself" and "wanted" versus "unwanted" gene activity.

We make use of both model and non-model organisms in our work.  The "simple" nematode C. elegans in a recurring tool in our experimental studies. C. elegans is small, easily cultured, and can readily be made to accept foreign DNA or RNA. The results of such experiments have outlined a number of concerted responses that recognize (and in most cases work to silence) the foreign nucleic acid. One such mechanism ("RNAi") responds to double stranded character in RNA: either as introduced experimentally into the organism or as produced from foreign DNA that has not undergone selection to avoid a dsRNA response. RNAi is not the only cellular defense against unwanted nucleic acid, and substantial current effort in the lab is also directed at identification of other triggers and mechanisms used in recognition and response to foreign information.  Beyond C. elegans, we seek novel processes driving genetic constancy and change the lie outside of standard chromosomal inheritance.  The latter studies have taken us to a number of studies with non-model organisms and toward a view that biology is best expanded by combining model organism approaches with a wide net for novel phenomena that includes examining wide diversity of non-model organisms.