Current Projects:

We primarily study mechanistic aspects of protein synthesis, using bacterial model systems. Some of the current projects in the lab involve analyzing: (1) the role of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in the decoding process, (2) the molecular basis of “ribosomal unlocking,” which limits the rate of translocation, (3) the roles of the initiation factors and rRNA in start codon selection, and (4) the role of nonessential translational GTPases in the cell.