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.

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