Genomic Gymnastics of a Single-Celled Ciliate and How It Relates to Humans

Credit: Denise Applewhite. Laura Landweber Grew up in: Princeton, New Jersey Job site: Columbia University, New York City Favorite food: Dark chocolate and dark leafy greens Favorite music: 1940’s style big band jazz Favorite hobby: Swing dancing If I weren’t a scientist I would be a: Chocolatier (see “Experiments in Chocolate” sidebar at bottom of story) One day last fall, molecular biologist Laura Landweber surveyed the Princeton University lab where she’d worked for 22 years. She and her team members had spent many hours that day laboriously affixing yellow Post-it notes to the laboratory equipment—microscopes, centrifuges, computers—they would bring with them to Columbia University, where Landweber had just been appointed full professor. Each Post-it specified the machinery’s location in the new lab. Items that would be left behind—glassware, chemical solutions, furniture, office supplies—were left unlabeled. As Landweber viewed the lab, decorated with a field of sunny squares, her thoughts turned to another sorting process—the one used by her primary research subject, a microscopic organism, to sift through excess DNA following mating. Rather than using Post-it notes, the creature, a type of single-celled organism called a ciliate, uses small pieces of RNA to tag which bits of genetic material to keep and which to toss. Landweber is particularly fond of Oxytricha trifallax, a ciliate with relatives that live in soil, ponds and oc...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Genetics Cells Cellular Processes Cool Creatures DNA Genomics Research Organisms RNA Source Type: blogs