Dr. Slack has a novel approach to miRNA research. “My lab comes
into miRNA studies with the perspective of ‘what’s in it for the
animal?’. Papers have been published on miRNAs based on cell and
tissue culture, but we have done much of our miRNA work in vivo
in C. elegans and mouse.” Dr. Slack talked about his lab’s work
on miR-34 and its response to radiation exposure. “miR-34 was
first discovered in C. elegans, and a bunch of labs discovered
that miR-34 was directly downstream of p53. Some groups showed
that P53 was part of miR-34. We looked at the proliferation of
miR-34 in p53’s role in cancer and its response to radiation.”
When Dr. Slack first started working on miR-34, no one had yet
knocked out miR-34. His group found that C. elegans with loss-
of-function mutations in the miR-34 gene have an abnormal
cellular survival response to radiation. “These animals are
highly radiosensitive in the soma and radioresistant in the
germline, showing a role for miR-34 in both apoptotic and
nonapoptotic cell death in