Contact Information:
The White Lab
Department of Human Genetics
The University of Chicago
Cummings Life Sciences Center 431
920 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Phone: (773) 834 0074
Fax: (773) 834 0074
Email: rspokony@bsd.uchicago.edu

Research:
I am currently working on two projects. First, to complement the antibody production of the ModENCODE project, we are tagging Drosophila transcription factors with eGFP in ~20 kb BACs in the P[acman] vector. We are in the process of characterizing the expression patterns and functionality of these tagged constructs through anti-GFP staining of embryos and third-instar tissues and rescue experiments in lethal mutant backgrounds. We will follow this up with ChIP-Chip experiments with an anti-GFP antibody against the tagged protein to determine the DNA binding locations of these transcription factors. Ultimately, this procedure will be used to fill in any remaining gaps in the ModENCODE data set due to difficulty producing antibodies against certain transcription factors.

Second, I am looking at the genome wide transcriptional response to the juvenile hormone mimic methoprene in Drosophila cell culture and whole animals using microarrays.