Heather McCullough

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Heather McCullough's Research

Investigating Genome-wide Translation Regulation

The eukaryotic gene expression program is regulated at many levels, including mRNA transcription, processing, localization, decay and translation, each of which must be correctly orchestrated for a cell to properly function. Changes in mRNA abundance have been widely studied over many different conditions in many model organisms to obtain a global picture of the variation and regulation of transcript abundance in human cells and tissues, in development, physiological responses, and disease. While these studies have revealed much information about cellular processes, regulation of mRNA abundance accounts for only part of the regulation of protein abundance. Thus, studying the architecture of translational regulation on a genomic scale will combine with previous data to provide a much richer and more complete picture of how the global program of human gene expression is regulated.