Jamie L. Wood

jlwood@olemiss.edu

Jamie L. Wood is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Bradley Jones’ lab. Jamie studies the development of the nervous system in Drosophila melanogaster.

Current projects
Methods to Identify Regions of Repo Autoregulation in the repo cis-regulatory element
Two types of cells compose the nervous system of animals:  neurons and glia.  Neurons transmit information throughout the system, while glial cells nourish, support and protect the neurons.  In Drosophila melanogaster, glial cells develop from the same neuronal stem cells as neurons, but the expression of a single gene, gcm, causes these stem cells to become glial cells.  The Gcm protein binds to the cis-regulatory element (CRE) of another gene called repo to make Repo protein; Repo protein in turn regulates several other glial genes.  However, additional aspects of this gene regulatory network remain poorly understood.  We have evidence to suggest that Repo autoregulates its own CRE but have not defined the specific binding sites for this interaction.  We will use the UAS/GAL4 system to test a series of deletions in the repo CRE for ectopic expression of a reporter gene (lacZ) in Drosophila.  These deletion constructs will allow us to map the regions that are necessary for repo regulation.

Publications
Johnson, R.W., Wood, J.L. and Jones, B.W., 2012. Characterization of cis-regulatory elements controlling repo transcription in Drosophila melanogaster. Gene 492, 167-176.