Jennifer Surtees
Jennifer Surtees
Biology and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Joint Seminar
Date & Time
Tue, Nov 06
11:00 AM
Location
Mateer Hall - Room G01
Contact
Beth Snyder
330-263-2379
Email
Jennifer Surtees, Assistant Professor from SUNY Buffalo will present...
"Mismatch repair gone rogue: how Msh2-Msh3 promotes trinucleotide repeat expansions"
Jennifer received her BS in Genetics from the University of Western Ontario in 1993 and her MS in Molecular Biology from the University of Toronto in 1996.
She received her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Toronto in 2001.
Her focus is on DNA Replication, Recombination and Repair; Genome Integrity; Molecular and Cellular Biology; Molecular genetics; Protein Function and Structure.
In her laboratory, she is interested in the general problem of maintaining genome stability. To this end, they focus on two distinct aspects of genome stability: 1) the roles of mismatch (MMR) proteins in multiple pathways for DNA repair and 2) the manner in which regulation of dNTP pools, through the regulation of ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) activity, impacts genome integrity.
1) MMR proteins recognize many different types of DNA lesions and then target the lesion for the appropriate repair pathway. We are interested in the mechanism(s) by which recognition of a lesion is translated into the appropriate DNA repair pathway, using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system. Is it through differential protein-nucleic acid or protein-protein interactions? To address these questions as well as the regulation of DNA repair pathway selection, we use a combination of genetic, biochemical and biophysical approaches.
2) RNR activity modulates the level of dNTPs that are available in a cell at a given time. Higher levels of dNTPs lead to higher mutation rates. We are interested in the various ways in which misregulated dNTP pools might affect cellular metabolism and affect the stability of the genome.