According to the central dogma of molecular biology, the information contained in the hereditary material, DNA, is passed to proteins via an intermediate molecule called RAN. Proteins direct the control of most cell functions. While the overall process of gene expression is understood, the details of the mechanisms involved in gene expression need clarification. For example, intervening sequences (or introns) are extra pieces of information inside genes that are not used to produce the final gene product. The significance of introns inside genes remains to be determined. This project is looking at requirements for splicing , in the bacterial virus T4, a process that removes introns from RNA during gene expression. RNA splicing mechanisms are varied, but in all cases, the sequence of nucleotides (chemical subunits of RNA and DNA) is important to the splicing process. %%% In this project, changes in the nucleotide sequence of the introns will be generated by chemical mutagenesis and the effect of these changes on splicing and gene expression will be evaluated. The overall goal of this study is to use chemically induced changes in the nucleotide sequences of introns to identify particular nucleotides in the introns important to splicing. This information will be used to enhance models for splicing mechanisms.
