UCLA Neuroscience Program Ph.D. Admissions Neuroscience Faculty UCLA and Beyond  



Douglas Black
The Regulation of Neuronal Gene Expression through Alternative Pre-mRNA Splicing

Work Email Address:  dougb@microbio.ucla.edu
Home Page: http://www.mimg.ucla.edu/faculty/black/index.html

Laboratory Address:
MRL 6-567
Work Address:
MRL 6-780
Phone Numbers:
(310) 794-7644

Selected Publications:

Xie J, Jan C, Stoilov P, Park J, Black DL A concensus CaMK IV-responsive RNA sequence mediates regulation of alternative exons in neurons.. RNA 2005; 11(12): 1825-1834.
Underwood J, Boutz P, Dougherty JD, Stoilov P, Black DL Homologues of the C. Elegans Fox-1 Protein are neuronal splicing regulators in mammals.. MCB 2005; 25(22): 10005-16.
Sharma S, Falick AM, Black DL Polypyrimidine tract binding protein blocks the 5' splice site-dependent assembly of U2AF and the prespliceosomal E complex.. Molecular Cell . 2005; 19(4): 485-96.
Amir-Ahmady B, Boutz PL, Markovtsov V, Phillips ML, Black DL Exon repression by polypyrimidine tract binding protein.. RNA (New York, N.Y.) . 2005; 11(5): 699-716.
Black DL Mechanisms of alternative pre-messenger RNA splicing.. Annual review of biochemistry. . 2003; 72: 291-336.
Grabowski PJ, Black DL Alternative RNA splicing in the nervous system.. Progress in Neurobiology 2001; 65: 289-308.
Xie J, Black DL A CaMK IV responsive RNA element mediates depolarization-induced alternative splicing of ion channels.. Nature. . 2001; 410(6831): 936-9.
Research Interest:

Our lab is interested in the regulation of pre-mRNA splicing and the biochemical mechanisms that control changes in splice sites. Alternative splicing is a common feature of metazoan gene expression; changes in splicing pattern allow the production of multiple mRNAs and hence multiple proteins from a single gene. The question of how protein number can be greater than gene number has come into prominence with the completion of the metazoan genome sequences and their relatively low gene numbers. Alternative splicing, a major contributor to protein diversity, is poorly understood mechanistically. This creates significant problems for the prediction of protein sequence from genome sequence. Alternative splicing is particularly common in genes expressed in the mammalian nervous system, where many proteins important for neuronal differentiation and function are made in diverse isoforms through controlled changes in splicing.

My lab works on several projects related to the control of pre-mRNA splicing in neurons. One major endeavor aims to identify splicing regulatory molecules and to determine their mechanisms of action. This uses the neural-specific N1 exon of the c-src gene as a model. A second effort is directed at understanding how cell signaling pathways impact the splicing reaction. This project focuses on the effect of cell excitation on the splicing of ion channel transcripts and the role of these splicing changes in neuronal plasticity. Other interests include developing oligonucleotide microarrays to assay splicing, and examining the biological role of specific splicing factors in knockout mice.