Douglas Black, Ph.D.

Black works on a range of projects related to the control of pre-mRNA splicing and its role in gene regulation. He studies the mechanisms of action of splicing regulators, as well as how these regulators affect biological processes such as cellular differentiation, tumor progression and the inflammatory response. He has long-standing projects examining two families of regulatory factors: the polypyrimidine tract binding, or PTB, proteins and the Rbfox proteins. 

In mechanistic studies, Black uses biochemical methods, in vitro systems and structural analyses to examine the molecular interactions of these proteins and analyze how they can alter spliceosome assembly. In biological studies, Black has shown that the PTB proteins control regulatory programs during early and late neuronal differentiation and are required for proper neuronal maturation and synaptogenesis. The Rbfox proteins control neuronal programs of expression and isoform choice for many genes affecting synaptic function, membrane physiology and calcium signaling. These efforts have used cell-based high throughput screens, whole transcriptome sequencing, crosslinking-immunoprecipitation and other genomic methods in embryonic stem cell and primary cell culture models and in conditional mutant mice. 

This work has brought Black into collaborative projects with numerous groups at UCLA and beyond who specialize in proteomics, bioinformatics, structure determination, molecular neuroscience, physiology, immunology, cancer biology and other fields.