Donald C. Rio
Donald Rio is a professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. His lab studies how certain pieces of DNA, called transposons, move around in the genome and how proteins can modify gene activity in different tissues by cutting up and reassembling messenger RNA. These processes are critical for understanding evolution, gene regulation and the origins of some diseases.
His mechanistic studies have influenced the fields of RNA processing, DNA recombination and genetic transposition. Rio's elegant work on the regulation of eukaryotic transposable elements, particularly P elements, has illuminated the importance of RNA binding proteins and cis-acting RNA "silencer" elements in controlling the tissue-specific splicing of pre-messenger RNAs and has clarified the biochemical mechanisms, protein-DNA interactions, cofactors and regulatory strategies used for mobilizing eukaryotic DNA transposons. These are fundamental processes involved in eukaryotic genome expression and evolution. Together these studies provide important paradigms for the mechanisms and regulation of eukaryotic transposable elements.