Robert Thach's chief area of interest involves the design of highly inducible eukaryotic expression vectors for the production and study of potentially cytotoxic proteins in animals and in stably transformed cell lines.
Transcription, translation, and mRNA turnover signals are combined in a shuttle vector so as to confer tissue specificity and to maximize the speed, the range of induction, and the induced steady-state level of virtually any protein.
Goessling, L.S., Daniels-McQueen, S., Bhattacharyya-Pakrasi, M., Lin, J.J., Thach, R.E. (1992) Enhanced degradation of the ferritin repressor protein during induction of ferritin mRNA translation. Science 256: 670-673.
Goessling, L.S., Mascotti, D.P., Bhattacharyya-Pakrasi, M., Gang, H., Thach, R.E. (1994) Irreversible steps in the ferritin synthesis induction pathway. J. Biol. Chem. 269: 4343-4348.
Mascotti, D.P., Goessling, L.S., Rup, D., Thach, R.E. (1996) Effects of the ferritin open reading frame on translational induction by iron. Prog. Nucleic Acid Res. Mol. Biol. 55: 121-134.
Goessling, L.S., Mascotti, D.P., Thach, R.E. (1998) Involvement of heme in the degradation of iron-regulatory protein 2. J. Biol. Chem. 273: 12555-12557.
Goessling, L.S., Allan, B.F., Mandelbaum,R.S., and Thach, R.E. Development of a Mitochondrial 12S rDNA Analysis for Distinguishing Sciuridae Species 19 with Potential to Transmit Ehrlichia and Borrelia Species to Feeding Amblyomma 20 americanum (Acari: Ixodidae). Journal of Medical Entomology. In press.