R. Keith Slotkin

The Slotkin laboratory investigates how plant cells determine which fragments of DNA should be expressed (like genes), and which should be targeted for repression and not allowed to express. The regions of the genome that are targeted for repression are called Transposable Elements (TEs), which are mobile ‘jumping genes’ that cause mutations when they jump. Most of the time these new mutations generated by TEs hurt the cell or are inconsequential, but occasionally something new is produced that is helpful and will be selected for, leading to some spectacular examples of TE-induced gene or trait regulation.

In a broad sense, what the Slotkin laboratory aims to determine is how self-perpetuating feed-forward cycles in the cell are initiated. The cycles we work on are RNA interference (RNAi), RNA-directed DNA Methylation (RdDM) and maintenance epigenetic silencing. We have learned that these cycles can feed into each other. Our goal now is to determine how the first cycle is triggered to initiate.