Kathleen McGinness

Education/Work Experience

• Postdoc in the Sauer Lab at MIT

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute, 2001 (with Gerald Joyce)

• B.S. in Chemistry, University of Maryland College Park, 1996

• B.S. in Psychology, University of Maryland College Park, 1996

Science stuff I know something about...

• tmRNA (or SsrA/10Sa RNA for you purists)

• translation

• energy-dependent proteolysis in bacteria

• The RNA World

• molecular biology in a world without kits

• in vitro selection and evolution of nucleic acids

• generation of nucleic acid and protein libraries

• in vitro RNA techniques

• nucleic acid-protein interactions (in vitro analysis and bacterial in vivo analysis)

• fishing experiments to look for things that interact with your RNA/DNA/protein of interest

• PCR (even colony PCR, although it is not a separate skill)

• bacterial protein expression/purification

• in vivo assays with E. coli i.e. analyzing effects on proteins/RNA

• molecular cloning

• Western/Northern/Southern blot analysis

• oligonucleotide synthesis

• RNA/DNA sequencing ("old school" and "new school" techniques)

• chemical and enzymatic structural probing of RNA/DNA

• gels, all kinds of gels: agarose, native acrylamide, denaturing acrylamide, SDS-acrylamide, two-dimensional

• enzyme kinetics

• radiolabeling nucleic acids and proteins

• familiarity with some biophysical techniques (a bit of CD spectroscopy, a small amount of analytical ultracentrifugation)

• fluorescence spectroscopy (nothing too fancy: straight-up fluorescence and a bit of anisotropy)

Publications

Engineering controllable protein degradation.

McGinness, K.E., Baker, T.A. & Sauer, R.T. (2006) Mol. Cell, 22, 701-707.

Ribosomal protein S1 binds mRNA and tmRNA similarly but plays distinct roles in translation of these molecules.

McGinness, K.E. & Sauer, R.T. (2004) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 13454–13459.

A Glimpse into tmRNA-mediated Ribosome Rescue.

Moore, S.D., McGinness, K.E. & Sauer, R.T. (2003) Science 300, 127–130. (comment)

In Search of an RNA Replicase Ribozyme.

McGinness, K.E. & Joyce, G.F. (2003) Chem. Biol. 10, 5–14. (review)

Continuous In Vitro Evolution of a Ribozyme that Catalyzes Three Successive Nucleotidyl Addition Reactions.

McGinness, K.E., Wright, M.C. & Joyce, G.F. (2002) Chem. Biol. 9, 585–596.

RNA-Catalyzed RNA Ligation on an External RNA Template.

McGinness, K.E. & Joyce, G.F. (2002) Chem. Biol. 9, 297–307.

Substitution of Ribonucleotides in the T7 RNA Polymerase Promoter Element.

McGinness, K.E. & Joyce, G.F. (2002) J. Biol. Chem. 277, 2987–2991.

Contact

If you're on OWW, post a message on my talk page, or send me an email.

If you're not on OWW, join now! In the meantime, you can email me. Just take my user name, hey that's kathmc, then add on mit, a period, and edu.

Send me stuff!
31 Ames St.
68-589
Cambridge, MA 02139

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