Welcome to the Reines Lab
The research in our lab centers on mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of gene expression. We are studying the transcription elongation and termination and factors that assist RNA polymerase II in transcription.
We have exploited yeast strains that show a novel regulatory mechanism of gene control that has shed light on the recently discovered world of transcripts that are unstable across genomes of many organisms. An unusual regulatory pathway determines where transcription of IMD2 starts as a function of the cellular GTP concentration. When GTP is abundant, transcription starts with a guanine nucleotide but the transcript terminates yielding a short non-coding RNA that is degraded; no Imd2 is made. When GTP is scarce, and Imd2 protein is needed, this start site is not used as transcription starts downstream from the termination site that yields the non-coding RNA. (Two opinion pieces describing our work and this mechanism
Using genetic assays, we have identified a region of an essential yeast protein, Nab3, that stitches together a complex of proteins that bind RNA and regulates expression at IMD2. Interestingly, this low complexity domain (it is almost 30% glutamine), has the
Latest News
- March 2018: Jeremy Hunn joins the lab as Research Specialist, Lead. Welcome, Jeremy!
- August 2018: Katherine Hutchinson joins the lab as a BCDB student. Welcome, Kate!
Alumni News

Dr. Wade Powell, former graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Danny Reines, Professor and Vice Chair in the Emory Department of Biochemistry, received the Emory University Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (GDBBS) Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2020. The award is presented annually to one outstanding GDBBS alumnus who has made a significant impact in his/her chosen career field.
The GDBBS directors were particularly impressed with Dr. Powell's achievements as a science educator and plan to honor him at an awards banquet on Friday, April 17, 2020 in Atlanta.
Dr. Powell was a graduate student in the Reines Lab from 1992 - 1997. After receiving his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Emory in 1997, Dr. Powell embarked on a career in toxicology, initially studying aryl hydrocarbon signal transduction in fish as a postdoctoral scholar in the Biology Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Since 2000, he has taught at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he is now a professor of biology. In 2019, Dr. Powell received the SOT Daniel and Patricia Acosta Undergraduate Educator Award for his outstanding toxicological education to undergraduate students.
His notable publications while in the Reines Lab included papers in Molecular General Genetics and Journal of Biological Chemistry (see below).
- Gu, W., W. Powell, J. Mote, Jr., and D. Reines (1993). Nascent RNA cleavage by arrested RNA polymerase II does not require upstream translocation of the elongation complex on DNA. J. Biol. Chem. 268:25604-25616.
- Powell, W., B. Bartholomew, and D. Reines (1996). Elongation factor SII contacts the 3' end of RNA in the RNA polymerase II elongation complex. J. Biol. Chem. 271:22301-22304.
- Powell, W. and D. Reines (1996). Mutations in the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II cause 6-azauracil sensitivity in yeast and increased transcriptional arrest in vitro. J. Biol. Chem. 271:6866-6873.
- Powell, W., J. C. Lennon, P. Elsevier, and D. Reines (1997). Glutamic acid-371 of the barnase homology domain in RNA polymerase II is not required for SII-activated RNA cleavage. Mol. Gen. Genet. 253(4):507-511.