Associate Professor

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Address: Molecular and Cellular Biology, LSS 525
1007 E. Lowell St.
P.O. Box 210106
Tucson, AZ 85721-0106
Phone: (520) 626-1401
E-Mail: gbosco@email.arizona.edu

Faculty Homepage

Research Interests

The Questions we care about:
We are interested in understanding how nuclear architecture, chromosome morphology and chromatin structure are modified in response to developmental cues.  We are also interested in elucidating the molecular mechanisms through which these modifications function and effect specialized cellular processes.  The types of processes that we study are:
(1) the formation of chromosome territories and polytene chromosomes.
(2) chromosome condensation.
(3) homology dependent pairing of chromosomes in meiosis and somatic interphase cells.
(4) pairing sensitive gene expression, e.g. transvection.
(5) chromosome and chromatin structure and epigenetic gene regulation.
(6) heterochromatin satellite DNA and genome evolution.

Our favorite model:
We primarily work with Drosophila as a model system because it s amenable to powerful genetic/genomic analysis and cell biological techniques.  In addition, the rich history and knowledge derived from previous studies of Drosophila chromosomes, combined with modern genetic/genomic and imaging technologies affords us the ability to dissect and visualize a variety of dynamic chromosome structures. 

Our goal:
Our goal is to understand the basic rules of how the structure of chromosomes and chromatin are regulated in the Drosophila system.  As we better understand how changes in these structures effect their function it will lead to insights that are fundamental to many critical cellular processes, such as chromosome segregation and genome stability, gene expression and epigenetic gene regulation.

Selected Publications

Ahlander J, Bosco G. Apr 2009. Sqd interacts with the Drosophila retinoblastoma tumor suppressor Rbf. Biochem Biophys Res Commun,2009 Apr 10;

Epstein AM, Bauer CR, Ho A, Bosco G, Zarnescu DC. Mar 2009. Drosophila fragile X protein controls cellular proliferation by regulating cbl levels in the ovary. Dev Biol,2009 Mar 21;

Sweeney SJ, Campbell P, Bosco G. Feb 2008. Drosophila sticky/citron kinase is a regulator of cell cycle progression, genetically interacts with Argonaute 1 and modulates epigenetic gene silencing. Genetics, 178:1311-25