Tullius Lab

The Tullius laboratory develops and applies new methods for determining the structure of DNA and DNA-protein complexes. We have shown that the hydroxyl radical (•OH) is an almost ideal chemical probe for revealing the shape of a DNA molecule.

Our group introduced the use of the hydroxyl radical as a high-resolution footprinting reagent for investigating the structure of DNA-protein complexes, and developed the missing nucleoside experiment as a rapid method for revealing the thermodynamically-important contacts made by a protein with its DNA binding site.

We now are using deuterium kinetic isotope effect experiments to reveal even finer details of how the hydroxyl radical cleavage pattern relates to the structure of a DNA or an RNA molecule.

We participated in the ENCODE Pilot Project sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the NIH. The aim of our work is to produce a map of the local structure of DNA throughout the human genome, to better understand how the genome functions.