University of Virginia Health System

Our lab studies the genetics and genomics of the cell-cycle in normal and cancer cells with an emphasis on microRNAs, DNA replication and DNA damage. The projects in the lab are summarized below: (1) We have focused on microRNAs that regulate cell-cycle progression during muscle differentiation or in prostate cancers, with a special emphasis on potential tumor suppressor microRNAs. We discover microRNAs that change under specific conditions using techniques like microarrays and cloning/high-throughput sequencing and identify the targets of the relevant microRNAs. (2) A better knowledge of how DNA replication is initiated or regulated in mammalian cells will allow us to devise (or discover) inhibitors that restrain DNA replication in cancer cells and understand how disorders in their regulation lead to genomic instability. For example, we are the part of the ENCODE consortium that maps origins of replication in human cells using genome tiling arrays. We also study the regulation of replication initiation-factors like ORC, Cdt1, geminin and Mcm10, to understand how they initiate replication and regulate the normal cell-cycle. (3) We study how tumor suppressors are involved in the normal response of the cell to DNA damage arising from endogenous or exogenous sources. Thus, we have implicated tumor suppressor proteins like p53, Fanconi Anemia complex and BRCA1 in the response of a cell to DNA damage induced by re-replication.

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Other Websites for this mentor:
http://mexico.bioch.virginia.edu