Thomas A. Kunkel

Biosketch

Thomas A. Kunkel, Ph.D., is a NIH Distinguished Investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He earned a BA in Biology from Thomas More University in Crestview Hills, Ky, and MS and PhD degrees in Developmental Biology from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington and then joined the NIEHS in 1982. He later became the Chief of the Laboratory of Structural Biology and is currently a member of the Genome Integrity and Structural Biology Laboratory. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he has received several awards.

Research Interests

Dr. Kunkel’s research uses structural biology, biochemistry, genetic and genomics to investigate determinants of DNA synthesis fidelity and how their success or failure affects human health. The parameters include maintaining appropriate concentrations of the precursors involved in DNA replication, the nucleotide selectivity of the many DNA polymerases known to be required for accurate replication, intrinsic and extrinsic exonucleolytic proofreading of mismatches made during replication, and several DNA repair processed, with current emphasis on DNA mismatch repair and ribonucleotide excision repair of mistakes made during replication of the eukaryotic nuclear genome. The goal is to better understand the mechanisms responsible for each on these processes during replication of undamaged DNA, and the consequences of failure to do so following environmental stress associated with human diseases.