Post-doctoral Fellow
1999-2005, Ph.D. Human Genetics and Molecular Biology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 2006-2009, Damon Runyon Posdoctoral Fellowship AwardResearch Interests
I am interested in utilizing the L1 retrotransposon as a tool for cancer gene discovery. Our laboratory recently constructed a synthetic L1 retroelement that exhibits greater than two orders of magnitude higher retrotransposition frequency than native L1. We are currently engineering a conditional L1 transgene to contain a gene-trap cassette, which can disrupt gene function through either mRNA truncation or activation of gene expression. We propose to use this L1 element to perform in vitro and in vivo mutagenesis screens with the goal of identifying novel tumor suppressors and oncogenes that influence the development of liver cancer.
Publications
1. Dang CV, O’Donnell KA, Zeller KI, Nguyen T, Osthus RC, Li F. The c-Myc target gene network. Semin. Cancer Biol. (2006) Aug; 16 (4): 253-64.
2. O’Donnell KA, Yu D, Zeller KI, Kim JW, Racke F, Thomas-Tikhonenko A, Dang, CV. Activation of Transferrin Receptor 1 by c-Myc enhances cellular proliferation and tumorigenesis. Mol Cell Biol. (2006) Mar; 26 (6): 2372-86.
3. O’Donnell KA, Wentzel E, Zeller KI, Dang, CV, Mendell, JT. c-Myc-regulated microRNAs modulate E2F1 expression. Nature (2005) 435: 839-43.
4. Dang CV, O’Donnell KA, Juopperi T. The great MYC escape in tumorigenesis. Cancer Cell. 2005 Sep;8(3): 177-178.
5. Li F., Wonsey DR, O’Donnell KA, Kim JW, Yustein J, Lee LA., Dang CV. Myc stimulates nuclearly encoded mitochondrial genes and mitochondrial biogenesis. Mol Cell Biol. (2005) Jul; 25 (14): 6225-6234.
6. Kim JW, Zeller KI, Wang Y, Jegga AG, Aronow BJ, O'Donnell KA, Dang CV. Evaluation of myc E-box phylogenetic footprints in glycolytic genes by chromatin immunoprecipitation assays. Mol Cell Biol. (2004) Jul; 24(13): 5923-36.
7. Zeller KI, Jegga AG, Aronow BJ, O'Donnell KA, Dang CV. An integrated database of genes responsive to the Myc oncogenic transcription factor: identification of direct genomic targets. Genome Biol. (2003); 4(10): R69. Epub 2003 Sep 11.
8. Frischmeyer PA, van Hoof A., O'Donnell K, Guerrerio AL, Parker R, Dietz HC. An mRNA surveillance mechanism that eliminates transcripts lacking termination codons, Science (2002); Mar 22, 295(5563): 2258-61.
Invited Chapters:
1. O’Donnell, KA and Mendell JT. “Dysregulation of microRNAs in human malignancy.” In microRNAs: From Basic Science to Disease Biology, Cambridge University Press, in press.
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