Helen Salz, Ph.D.

Professor

Department of Genetics

Research: Regulation of alternative splicing during Drosophila development

Tissue specific alternative splicing plays a prominent role in regulating gene expression in metazoans. Although the molecular events required to splice a simple pre-mRNA in vitro are fairly well understood, we remain largely ignorant of how the complex process of splicing is regulated in vivo. An understanding of how this process works is of fundamental importance since errors in RNA splicing are associated with a variety of human diseases, including cancer. Using a combination of genetics and biochemical approaches, we study how splicing of the Drosophila developmental switch gene Sex-lethal (Sxl) is controlled. Due to the remarkable conservation of the splicing machinery from humans to flies, the paradigms we develop using the very tractable Drosophila system are relevant to human biology.

 

Selected Publications

Mount, S. M., and Salz, H. K. (2000)
Pre-messenger RNA processing factors in the Drosophila melanogaster genome.
J Cell Biol 150, 37-43. /

Nagengast, A. A., and Salz, H. K. (2001)
The Drosophila U2 snRNP-U2A' protein has an essential function that is SNF/U2B" independent.
Nucl Acids Res 29, 3841-3847. /

Nagengast, A. A., Stitzinger, S. M., Tseng, C.-H., Mount, S. M., and Salz, H. K. (2003)
Sex-lethal splicing autoregulation in vivo: interactions between SEX-LETHAL, the U1 snRNP and U2AF underlie male exon skipping.
Development 130, 463-471. /

Salz, H. K., Mancebo, R. S. Y., Nagengast, A. A., Speck, O., Psotka, M., and Mount, S. M. (2004)
The Drosophila U1-70K protein is required for viability, but its arginine-rich domain is dispensable.
Genetics 168, 2059-2065. /