SELF EXAM:

Occupation: Academician, Institute Professor (highest Academic Rank at MIT)

Alternative career choice: Farmer in Kentucky

What do rock stars and scienctists have in common: Both engage in creative work, enjoy audiences, and the have strange objects in their hands.

I tend to approach life: Believing tomorrow will bring the best day of my life.

Biggest misconceptions about me or my work: That I do not have a lot of pleasure in my life.

Worst part-time job ever: Cleaning manure from a barn

ABOUT MY RESEARCH:

Disease Area: Changes in cancer cells

Research Area: The molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of expression of split genes.

Science Impact/Accomplishments or Goal: The discovery of split genes has been of fundamental importance for research both in biology as well as in medicine. Split genes contain nonsense segments that are removed by an "editing" process called RNA splicing in the course of expression of the genetic information. Before this discovery, a gene was conceived as a continuous segment within the long double-stranded DNA molecules. The discovery that informational sequences within a gene could be discontinuous, that is, present in the genetic material (DNA) as several well-separated segments was unanticipated and fundamental for understanding the genetic causes of cancer and other diseases.

Research Description: Cancer cells differ from normal cells by changes in the expression of genes that stimulate cell growth and malignant characteristics such as cell migration. Mutation-like alterations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in cancer cells promote these changes. I investigate the chemical mechanisms by which the factors encoded by oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes regulate the expression of genes that control the growth and malignancy. The split gene structure allows variation in how a gene is translated into function protein. Various parts of the gene can be assembled in different cells by alternative RNA splicing. Further we are now studying how small RNAs encoded by newly discovered genes control cell growth, cell death and malignant properties.

Videos courtesy of Stand Up To Cancer.