My lab focuses on how the ribosome coordinates the complex molecular event of translation and its regulation. Many projects rely on biochemical methods that use in vitro translation systems fully reconstituted from both bacterial and yeast components. Most projects in our lab also incorporate ribosome profiling and other high throughput genome-wide approaches to connect biochemical findings to biological insights. In the bacterial system, projects focus on how the cell decides which mRNAs to translate, how pauses during elongation are resolved, and how irreversibly arrested ribosomes are rescued and recycled. In eukaryotes, projects focus broadly on the lifetime of an mRNA: its synthesis and processing in the nucleus, its translation by the ribosome in the cytoplasm, its ultimate degradation, and how the ribosome participates in these decisions – these questions are essentially those of gene regulation and mRNA quality control.
Awards and Achievements
- National Academy of Science
- National Academy of Medicine
- Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professor