.: Department of Biology: Keith Maggert

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Keith Maggert received his bachelors degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California Santa Cruz, which he attended from 1988-1992. After graduation, he entered the University of California San Diego as a graduate student. Initially, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Michael Levine and worked on mesoderm determination and gastrulation in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. After a few years, his attention turned toward chromosome biology and cytogenetics. He moved to the Salk Institute to work with Dr. Gary Karpen on the structure of the centromere - the region of the chromosome responsible for proper segregation of the genetic material. His research helped establish that identical DNA sequences may behave differently depending on context and condition, a branch of genetics called "epigenetics." This work earned him his Ph.D. in 2000. Keith continued investigating epigenetics when he joined Kent Golic's laboratory at the University of Utah in 2000 as a postdoctoral fellow. There (and during a brief visiting researcher position with John Tamkun at the University of California Santa Cruz) he began his work on genomic imprinting, asymmetric gene regulation, and DNA modification. Keith joined the faculty of the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University in the Fall of 2004.

Keith Maggert

Keith Maggert
Assistant Professor

3258 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-3258

Office:
Biological Sciences Building West
Room 354
979-845-6610

Lab:
Biological Sciences Building West
Room 301
979-845-6593

Fax: 979-845-2891
Email: kmaggert@mail.bio.tamu.edu

Epigenetics in Drosophila

Research in the laboratory uses the fruit fly to investigate how genes on a chromosome are regulated. We use the tools available to Drosophila research – cell biology, genetics, embryology, biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, and informatics – to investigate how a gene is turned on when needed, how that decision is maintained through cell division, and how that decision can be changed.

We are investigating four specific features of epigenetic regulation:

How alterations of one region of the genome affects the behavior of another, an emerging understanding of “homeostasis” at the genetic level
How one gene’s behavior is separated from closely-linked genes via intervening Boundary Elements
Why the location of a chromosome in the nucleus affects its ability to be activated or inactivated via the Nuclear Matrix
How some copies of the identical Ribosomal DNA gene array can be on, while others are off.

Paredes S, Maggert KA (2009). Ribosomal DNA Contributes To Global Chromatin Regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in press.

Paredes S, Maggert KA. (2009). Expression of I-CreI Endonuclease Generates Deletions Within the rDNA of Drosophila. Genetics 181(4): 1661-71.

Maggert KA, Gong WJ, Golic KG. (2008). "Methods for Homologous Recombination in Drosophila," in Drosophila Protocols, Christian Dahmann editor. Humana Press. ISBN 978-1-58829-817-1

Goll MG, Kirpekar F, Maggert KA, Yoder JA, Hsieh C-L, Zhang X, Golic KG, Jacobsen SE, Bestor TH. (2006). Methylation of tRNAAsp by DNA methyltransferase-2 in mammals, flowering plants, and Dipteran insects. Science, 311: 395-398.

Maggert K, Golic K. (2005). Highly-Efficient Sex Chromosome Interchanges Produced by I-CreI Expression in Drosophila. Genetics, 171: 1103-1114.

Maggert, Keith and Kent Golic. (2002). The Y Chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster Exhibits Chromosome-Wide Imprinting . Genetics, 162(3): 1245-1258.

Maggert, Keith and Gary Karpen. (2001). The Activation of a Neocentromere in Drosophila Requires Proximity to an Endogenous Centromere . Genetics, 158(4): 1615-1628.

Maggert, Keith and Gary Karpen. (2000). Acquisition and metastability of centromere identity and function: sequence analysis of a human neocentromere . Genome Research, 10: 725-728.

Dobie, Kenneth, Kumar Hari, Keith Maggert and Gary Karpen. (1999). Centromere proteins and chromosome inheritance: a complex affair . Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 9: 206-217.

Maggert, Keith, Michael Levine and Manfred Frasch. (1995). The somatic-visceral subdivision of the embryonic mesoderm is initiated by dorsal gradient thresholds in Drosophila. Development, 121: 2107-2116.

Ip, Y. Tony, Keith Maggert and Michael Levine. (1994). Uncoupling gastrulation and mesoderm differentiation in the Drosophila embryo . EMBO Journal, 13(24): 5826-5834.

Taiz, Lincoln, Hannah Nelson, Keith Maggert, Louis Morgan, Brad Yatabe, Saundra Lee Taiz, Bernard Rubinstein and Nathan Nelson. (1994). Functional analysis of conserved cysteine residues in the catalytic subunit of the yeast vacuolar H + -ATPase . Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1194(2): 329-34.