Kansas City, Mo. (Feb. 20, 2007) – The lab team of Joan Conaway, Ph.D., and Ron Conaway, Ph.D., Investigators, have collaborated with Arcady Mushegian, Ph.D., of the Institute’s Bioinformatics Center, and Mike Washburn, Ph.D., Laurence Florens, Ph.D., and their group in the Proteomics Center to establish a better understanding of a yeast model of the transcription factor ELL/EAF, which will clear the way for new approaches to studying the function of ELL/EAF.

     The paper, “Identification and Characterization of a Schizosaccharomyces pombe RNA Polymerase II Elongation Factor with Similarity to the Metazoan Transcription Factor ELL,” will be published in the Feb. 23 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and was selected as the journal’s Paper of the Week. It was initially published in the Dec. 6, 2006 online version of the journal.

     “We’re excited about these findings because they open up new strategies for understanding the function of ELL/EAF, which is thought to control gene regulation by stimulating transcription elongation,” said Dr. Joan Conaway. “The gene encoding ELL, one of the two subunits of this transcription factor, is involved in chromosomal translocations in certain leukemias.”

     While there is a substantial body of work demonstrating an in vivo role for ELL in controlling transcript elongation, little is known about whether it regulates many or just a few genes; how it is targeted to genes it regulates; and how the activity of ELL/EAF itself is controlled.

     “This team has demonstrated, for the first time, that ELL/EAF is present in the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe and that it has properties expected of an elongation factor,” said Robb Krumlauf, Ph.D., Scientific Director. “Because of the ease of genetic manipulations in yeast, it will now be possible to study relatively quickly many of the questions about ELL/EAF that until now have proven difficult to address in more complex organisms.”

     Contributing authors from the Stowers Institute include Charles Banks, Predoctoral Research Associate; Stephanie Kong, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate; Laurence Florens, Ph.D., Managing Director of Proteomics; Skylar Martin-Brown, Research Technician II; Michael Washburn, Ph.D., Director of Proteomics; Joan Conaway, Ph.D., Investigator; Arcady Mushegian, Ph.D., Director of Bioinformatics; and Ronald Conaway, Ph.D., Investigator.

     Henrik Spahr, from the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine also contributed to the paper.

About the Stowers Institute
     Housed in a 600,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility on a 10-acre campus in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research conducts basic research on fundamental processes of cellular life. Through its commitment to collaborative research and the use of cutting-edge technology, the Institute seeks more effective means of preventing and curing disease. The Institute was founded by Jim and Virginia Stowers, two cancer survivors who have created combined endowments of $2 billion in support of basic research of the highest quality.