Presenter:

Thomas Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis, Ph.D.

Stadtman Investigator

NIH Distinguished Scholar Head

Functional Transcriptomics Section

RNA Biology

Laboratory NCI-Frederick

Dr. Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis studies the regulatory pathways and functional roles of alternative splicing and other pre-mRNA processing events in mammalian cells. Towards this, he has developed several CRISPR-based screening platforms which are coupled to high-throughput phenotyping and enable systematic exploration of the regulatory and functional complexity of pre-mRNA processing. Dr. Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis’ team combines these functional genomics tools with molecular and biochemical approaches as well as animal models to identify alternative exons and other genetic segments that underlie phenotypes related to normal physiology and disease states. The long-term goal of his research is to contribute to the functional annotation of all exons in the human genome and to map the gene regulatory networks that underlie the complexity of the mammalian transcriptome.