Robert Landick
Credentials: Biochemistry Department
Position title: Control of transcription elongation; RNA polymerase structure/function
Email: landick@bact.wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 265-8475
Address:
5441 Microbial Sciences Building
1550 Linden Dr
Madison, WI 53706
LAB WEBSITE:
FOCUS GROUPS:
Molecular & Genome Biology of Microbes; Transcriptional Mechanisms
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:
Our research focuses on RNA polymerase, the central enzyme of gene expression in all free-living organisms. Our goal is to understand how RNA polymerase is regulated during the process of transcription (RNA synthesis). In organisms from bacteria to humans, the cell’s ability to make long RNA chains, which include most mRNAs and some structural RNAs (e.g., rRNA), requires that extrinsic elongation regulators interact with RNA polymerase to suppress its innate tendency to fall into inactive off-line states that include long pauses, arrest, or termination. We seek to understand the fundamental properties of RNA polymerase that make it susceptible to pausing, arrest, or termination and how elongation regulators alter these properties. We study RNA polymerases from both bacterial and human cells and use a variety of approaches, from genetics to biophysics to structural biology, to study this fundamental paradigm of gene regulation. Lab members are engaged in experiments ranging from detailed biochemical characterization of protein-nucleic acid interactions, to the study of transcription regulators in cells using genome-scale methods (ChIPseq & RNAseq), to collaborative projects with other labs to study transcription by single molecules of RNA polymerase and to obtain crystallographic sturctures of RNA polymerase and transcription regulators. Our work has practical applications in drug discovery by identification on novel RNA polymerase inhibitors and in controlling transcriptional programs for synthetic microbiology.
ALSO A TRAINER IN THE FOLLOWING PROGRAMS: Biochemistry (IPiB), Genetics, Biophysics, Microbiology (MDTP)