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Kent Golic Back to Faculty

Kent Golic

Professor

Ph.D. University of Washington

Graduate Program Membership:

Office/Building: ASB 448A
Phone: 801-581-8726
Email: golic@biology.utah.edu

Research Statement

Our primary interest is to understand the cellular responses to telomere loss using Drosophila melanogaster as a model. Telomeres are protein/nucleic acid structures at the ends of linear chromosomes that prevent the cell from interpreting the end as a DNA double strand break. In general, when a somatic cell detects that a chromosome is missing a telomere, that cell will undergo apoptosis. This induced cell suicide is useful to prevent the proliferation of cells with damaged genomes. However, some cells do escape apoptosis and continue to divide, resulting in amplification of the genomic damage. In the male germline, cells that carry a chromosome that has lost a telomere frequently survive, and the non-telomeric end is healed by the addition of a new telomere. We are identifying and characterizing the genes that control these response pathways.

Research Interests

General Interests
Specific Interests
  • Chromosome structure and function
  • Telomeres
  • Drosophila
  • Genetic technologies

Selected Publications

  • Kurzhals, R. L., Fanti, L., Gonzalez Ebsen, A. C., Rong, Y. S., Pimpinelli, S., Golic, K. G., 2017 Chromosome healing is promoted by the telomere cap component Hiphop in Drosophila. Genetics 207: 949-959
  • Karg, T. J. and Golic, K. G., 2017 Photoconversion of DAPI and Hoechst dyes to green and red emitting forms after exposure to UV excitation. Chromosoma, in press (published online Dec. 12, 2017)
  • Titen, S. W. A., H.-C. Lin, J. Bhandari, and K. G. Golic, 2014 Chk2 and P53 regulate the transmission of healed chromosomes in the Drosophila male germline. PLoS Genetics 10: e1004130
  • R. Chakraborty, Y. Li, L. Zhou and K. G. Golic, 2015 Corp Regulates P53 in Drosophila melanogaster via a Negative Feedback Loop. PLoS Genetics 11(7): e1005400
  • Akbari, O. S., Hugo J. Bellen, Ethan Bier, Simon L. Bullock, Austin Burt, George M. Church, Kevin R. Cook, Peter Duchek, Owain R. Edwards, Kevin M. Esvelt, Valentino M. Gantz, Kent G. Golic, Scott J. Gratz, Melissa M. Harrison, Keith R. Hayes, Anthony A. James, Thomas C. Kaufman, Juergen Knoblich, Harmit S. Malik, Kathy A. Matthews, Kate M. O�Connor-Giles, Annette L. Parks, Norbert Perrimon, Fillip Port, Steven Russell, Ryu Ueda, and Jill Wildonger, 2015 Safeguarding gene drive experiments in the laboratory. Science, 349: 927-929
  • Hill, H. and K. G. Golic, 2015 Preferential Breakpoints in the Recovery of Broken Dicentric Chromosomes in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 201: 563-572
  • Rong, Y. S., M. M. Golic and K. G. Golic, 2016 The pugilistDominant mutation of Drosophila melanogaster: a simple sequence repeat disorder reveals localized transport in the eye. PLoS One 11: e0151377

Courses Taught

  • Biol 2030: Principles of Genetics