Position Title
Professor Emeritus
Position Title
Professor Emeritus
- Molecular and Cellular Biology
Bio
Research Interests
My research focused on whether retrotransposable elements, as epitomized by the one million copies of “Alu” sequences which constitute 10% of the human genome, are genomic parasites or serve essential functions. Contrary to the junk DNA hypothesis we demonstrated that the expression of these elements is tightly regulated by the cell stress and is part of the normal stress response. Research by other groups further shows that their transcripts are contained within stress granules implying their role in regulating translation during recovery from cell stress.
Education and Degree(s)
- 1967 B.S. in Chemistry, Drexel Institute of Technology
- 1971 Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
Publications
- Chu WM, R Ballard, BW Carpick, BRG Williams, and CW Schmid. 1998. Potential Alufunction: Regulation of the activity of double-stranded RNA-activated kinase PKR. Molecular and Cellular Biology. 18:58-68
- Chu WM, RE Ballard, and CW Schmid. 1997. Palindromic sequences preceding the terminator increase polymerase III template activity. Nucleic Acids Research. 25:2077-2082
- Chu WM, ZX Wang, RG Roeder, and CW Schmid. 1997. RNA polymerase III transcription repressed by Rb through its interactions with TFIIIB and TFIIIC2. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 272:14755-14761