Rader, Dr. Stephen
PhD, Biophysics (University of California, San Francisco); BA, Biology and Chemistry (Swarthmore College)
Biography
Professor Rader received his B.A. with Distinction from Swarthmore College in Biology and Chemistry. He carried out a Ph.D. in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dr. David Agard at the University of California, San Francisco. His postdoctoral research into the mechanism of pre-mRNA splicing was carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Christine Guthrie at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been employed at UNBC since 2003.
Research and Expertise
Professor Rader's laboratory studies the biological role of pre-mRNA splicing in an organism that has nearly lost all splicing: Cyanidioschyzon merolae. This extremophilic red alga, an inhabitant of volcanic hot springs with temperatures up to 60 C and acidity down to pH 0.1, has lost all but 38 of the ~2000 introns that its ancestor had (for comparison, humans have ~200,000 introns in our genomes). The Rader Lab seeks to understand whether the remaining introns have been maintained for important biological reasons, or whether this organism is headed towards being the first known eukaryote that completely loses RNA splicing.
- Biodiversity/Ecology
- Biomedical
- Chemistry
- English