Gideon Dreyfuss  Dr. Gideon Dreyfuss is the Isaac Norris Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. He received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry in 1978 from Harvard University. Dreyfuss is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Dreyfuss Lab is interested in various projects studying the function and biogenesis of non-coding RNA and the proteins that interact with RNA. A primary research goal of the lab is to elucidate the function of Survival of Motor Neuron protein, SMN, which assembles a heptameric ring of Sm proteins on U snRNAs to form snRNPs that are essential components of the splicesome. Moreover, loss of functional SMN is directly linked to spinal muscular atrophy, a debilitating neurodegenerative disease that is characterize by the eventual death of motor neurons and muscular wasting. The Dreyfuss Lab is conducting research to understand the role of SMN in SMA pathology and using high throughput screening to discover potential therapeutics. The lab also studies the dynamic mechanism of RNA splicing, the RNA-binding proteins that determine exonic specificity, and snRNAs that are important regulators of splicing and mRNA maturation.