Stanley N. Cohen

My research is in three separate areas: evolution and propagation of bacterial plasmids, RNA decay as a genetic control mechanism, and the genetics of cancer. Current work on bacterial plasmids focuses on mechanisms that regulate the inheritance of plasmids at the time of cell division and on the mechanism controlling the replication linear plasmids. Work on RNA decay focuses principally on mechanisms of polyadenylation and its effects on the degradation of bacterial RNA. Additional research concerns the evolution of signals and enzymes implicated in RNA decay. In the third area, we have recently devised a method for homozygously inactivating mammalian genes randomly, and then isolating cells in which inactivation has produced a phenotype of interest. Using this approach, novel tumor suppressor genes have been identified and cloned, and the mechanisms by which they act are being investigated.