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Faculty
David L. Herrin
Professor of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology

Email: herrin@mail.utexas.edu
Website
Main Office: PAI 2.24
Phone: 512 471-3843

Alternate Office: PAI 2.18
Alt. Phone: 512 471-3844

Mailing Address
The University of Texas at Austin
for courier- Bio 311 24th & Whitis
1 University Station A6700
Austin ,TX 78712
David L. Herrin

Research Summary

There are several lines of molecular biology research currently underway in my laboratory. A major area concerns intron ribozymes that are found primarily in organellar genes, nuclear rRNA genes, prokaryotes, and certain viruses. These genetic elements have moved horizontally between genomes and organisms during evolution, and they have two unique properties which promote their existence. One is the ability of the RNAs they encode to catalyze their own splicing (i.e., they can self-splice). A second feature is that some of these introns encode proteins that promote their own splicing, and act to initiate movement of the intron into intronless alleles (intron homing). We are investigating both of these intron-related processes using biochemical and genetic approaches. These studies are providing new insights into the evolution of genes and intron ribozymes, and providing molecular tools for other studies. We have also begun to use the novel intron-encoded endonucleases to study how chloroplasts repair a double-strand in the genome. This work is being performed in Chlamydomonas and Arabidopsis, as these organisms offer complementary advantages for the study of organellar DNA repair.