Michael Lane profile picture
315 464-5540

Michael Lane, PhD

1239 Weiskotten Hall
766 Irving Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
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CURRENT APPOINTMENTS

Associate Professor of Medicine

LANGUAGES

English

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Enzymatic detection of DNA secondary structure; Physical mapping of genomic DNA in the million-base-pair size range, via pulsed field electrophoresis

EDUCATION

PhD: Syracuse University, 1984

RESEARCH ABSTRACT

DNA Mediated Structure Transduction

Research ongoing in my laboratory is focused on two topics. The first project involves evaluating DNA structural transitions evoked as a consequence of intercalative ligand binding. This research is based on recent development in our understanding of the degree of structural variation accessible to double stranded DNA. A classical view of DNA held that the molecule was essentially bistable in nature having only two predominant structures known as the A and B forms. It now appears that such a view is an oversimplification. While the initial observations of structural diversity were made by single x-ray diffraction, it has become obvious that the enzyme DNAse 1 accurately reflects the local stacking geometrics exhibited by DNA in solution. This observation, coupled with the ability of the enzyme to locate bound ligands through site specific inhibition of the nuclease, at the position on the DNA to which the ligand is bound, allows evaluation of structural alterations induced by a ligand away from its principal interaction site. The goal of this research is to determine how far an intercalated ligand can transmit structural information in various sequence contexts.

Evolutionary Selection for Sequence Content

A new project underway in addition to that above, is an attempt to understand why gene sequences are coded by specific sequences. This question arises because at present there is no widely accepted physical basis which is capable of explaining why certain codons are employed vis. the other codons which could be employed to encode a specific amino acid. The issue also exists for non-coding DNA and we have recently demonstrated large-scale organization of the most ubiquitous of the human DNA repeats, the 300 base-pair Alu repeat.

Selected References

Bishop, K.D., Y.-Q. Huang, P.N. Borer, and M.J. Lane, Actinomycin D Induced Strand Assymetry in a DNA Hexadecamer. Nucleic Acids Research, 19: 871, 1991.

Lane, M.J., P.G. Waterbury, W.T. Carroll, A.M. Smardon, B.D. Faldasz, S. Mante, C. Huckaby, R.E. Kouri, D.J. Hanlon, P.J. Hahn, J. Scalzi, J.C.Hozier . Variation in Genomic Alu Repeat Density as a Basis for Construction of Large-Scale Physical Maps of Human Chromosomes. Chromosoma, 101: 349, 1992.

PUBLICATIONS

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