Post-transcriptional Regulation of Gene Expression in Development & Disease
Post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and small non-coding RNAs plays an essential role in animal development and disease.
We study post-transcriptional regulation during the maternal-to-zygotic transition in early embryos as well as in neural lineages in the developing brain of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, using diverse techniques including genetics, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and computational biology.
We have also analyzed of the role of RBPs in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by producing phage-displayed synthetic antibodies that recognize dozens of RBPs implicated in the disease, and using the antibodies to study post-transcriptional regulation of the developmental transcriptome of iPS cells induced to differentiate into neurons.

Image by Christian Guthier
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”
-H. L. Mencken