- Vaughn, J.C. and Chen, J. 2008. A comparative phylogenetic approach to a general U4-/U6-snRNA secondary structure model. Gene (in press).
- Chen, J., Concel, V.J., Bhatla, S., Rajeshwaran, R., Smith, D.L.H., Varadarajan, M., Backscheider, K.L., Bockrath, R.A., Petschek, J.P., and Vaughn, J.C. 2007. Alternative splicing of an rnp-4f isoform retaining an evolutionarily-conserved 5’-UTR intronic element is developmentally regulated and shown via RNAi to be essential for normal central nervous system development in Drosophila melanogster.
Gene 399: 91-104.
- Fetherson, R.A., Strock, S.B., White, K.N., and Vaughn, J.C. 2006. Alternative pre-mRNA splicing in Drosophila spliceosomal assembly factor rnp-4f during development. Gene 371: 234-245
- Peters, N.T., Rohrbach, J.A., Zalewski, B.A., and Vaughn, J.C. 2004. RNA editing and regulation of Drosophila rnp-4f expression by sas-10 antisense readthrough mRNA transcripts. RNA 9: 698-710.
- Feiber, A., Rangarajan, J., and Vaughn, J.C. 2002. The evolution of single-copy Drosophila nuclear rnp-4f: Spliceosomal intron losses create polymorphic alleles. J. Molec. Evolution 55: 401-413.
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Jack Vaughn is a molecular cell biologist and instructor in the Molecular Biology Program. His current major research interests are in the molecular regulation of gene expression with special reference to functions of sense/antisense transcript pairs. Students in his lab utilize a wide variety of modern molecular methods in their research including PCR amplification of selected genes, reverse transcription-PCR amplification of selected mRNA transcripts, fluorescence microscopy localization of selected mRNAs and their encoded proteins, and DNA sequencing. Dr. Vaughn and his students have recently completed a microarray-based survey of transcript positions and orientations for all known genes within the 21,800,000 nucleotides of the euchromatic portion of the X-chromosome in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Among the 141 sense/antisense transcript pairs identified, his lab has been intensively studying the genes “rnp-4f” and “sas-10.” One alternatively spliced mRNA isoform of “rnp-4f” is a functional orthologue to human p110, which acts as an snRNP recycling factor during spliceosomal assembly. Dr. Vaughn and his students have recently shown that transcripts from these two genes form duplexes which are developmentally regulated. Some “rnp-4f” transcripts undergo extensive “editing,” wherein many encoded adenine-containing nucleotides are converted posttranscriptionally to guanine via the double-stranded fly RNA editing enzyme ADAR. Preliminary results suggest that the subsequently observed down-regulation of “rnp-4f “ mRNA levels appears to be caused by an intrinsic RNAi pathway participation. Dr. Vaughn and his students are testing this hypothesis by utilization of mutants defective in this pathway and also by activation of the intrinsic fly RNAi pathway via transformation of embryos with appropriately constructed transgenes. An additional interest in the functional significance of 5’- and 3’- UTR sequence elements, with special reference to post-transcriptional control of gene expression during embroyonic development.
