Jun Ma, PhD
Appointment
Professor of Pediatrics, Biomedical Informatics (primary) and Developmental Biology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Email
jun.ma@cchmc.org
Phone
513-636-7977
Fax
513-636-4317
Credentials
PhD: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1983-1988 (degree awarded 1990)
BS: Peking University, 1978-1982
Awards and Honors
- Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, 1989-1992
- William F. Milton Research Award, Harvard Medical School, 1989-1990
- American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award, 1995-1998
- Harvard Society of Fellows
Research
Molecular mechanisms of gene regulation and embryonic development
How are genes turned on and off in eukaryotes? How do gene activities control such complex biological processes as embryonic development? Answers to these important questions are fundamental in our effort to understand the human body and improve human health. Dr. Ma's laboratory is addressing these and other questions using the fruitfly Drosophila. They study both gene-specific activators such as the Drosophila morphogenetic protein Bicoid and co-factors that control transcription and chromatin structure. They take advantage of a combination of biochemical, structural, genetic, cellular, and mathematical approaches for their studies. Dr. Ma's lab is also interested in studying how human gene variants alter their biological and biochemical functions.
Research Grants and Contracts
National Institutes of Health: #1R01 GM072812, "Activities of the Bicoid gradient in Drosophila embryos"; 7/1/05-6/30/09; 25% effort; J. Ma, P.I.; Total direct cost $760,000
National Natural Science Foundation of China: #30428029, "Mechanisms of gene regulation and embryonic patterning"; 1/1/05-12/31/07; P.I., Ma, J.; co-P.I. (China), Jiao, R.; No PI salary; Total award amount: ¥ 400,000
Presentations
Bio2000 Lectures, Tsinghua and Peking Universities, Beijing, China, September 27, 28, 2007
Bio2000 Lectures, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, September 24, 26, 2007
Graduate Institute of Neuroscience, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, July 2, 2007
Scientific Writing Workshop, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, June 29-July 1, 2007
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, January 29, 2007
Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, September 18, 2006
Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, September 12, 2006
Bio2000 Lectures, Tsinghua and Peking Universities, Beijing, China, September 7, 8, 2006
Bio2000 Lectures, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, September 4, 6, 2006
Department of Biology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, September 22, 2005
Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, July 15, 2004
Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, September 16, 2003
Genetics Ph.D. Program, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, March 10, 2003
College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China, September 25, 2003
Department of Cell Biology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, January 4, 2001
Department of Pathology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 29, 2001
Mark Ptashne's 60th Birthday Symposium on How Gene Regulation Works, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, November 10-12, 2000
Department of Microbiology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, February 10, 1999
Program in Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, October 13, 1999
Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, October 19, 1999
Department of Biology, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, October 27, 1999
The Conference on Life Sciences for the Twenty First Century, Peking University, Beijing, China, May 5-6, 1998
Department of Biology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska, September 24, 1998
The First Midwest Symposium on Molecular Biology of Cell Regulation, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 22 and 23, 1997
Max-Planck Institute, Cologne, Germany, March 10, 1997
Department of Cell Growth, Differentiation, and Development, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, March 11, 1997
Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 8, 1997
Department of Molecular Biology, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, April 10, 1997
The 43rd Rachford Lectures Symposium on Transcriptional Control of Embryogenesis, Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 15-16, 1997
International Workshop on Advanced Medicinal Biotechnology, Beijing, China, October 7-9, 1997
Department of Biology, Peking University, Beijing, China, October 10, 1997
Department of Biology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, January 22, 1996
Scriptgen Pharmaceuticals, Medford, Massachusetts, December 9, 1996
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 10, 1996
New England Biolabs, Beverly, Massachusetts, September 31, 1995
Department of Biology, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, October 17, 1995
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, November 4, 1994
Midwest Yeast Club, University of Chicago, Illinois, November 6 and 7, 1993
Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, University of Chicago, Illinois, November 8, 1993
Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, January 9, 1992
Baylor Medical School, Houston, Texas, January 27, 1992
University of Houston, Houston, Texas, January 29, 1992
Duke University College of Medicine, Duhram, North Carolina, February 19, 1992
Eleanor Rooselvelt Institute, Denver, Colorado, February 28, 1992
Children's Hospital Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 16, 1992
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Penssylvania, March 19, 1992
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, March 26, 1992
Beth Isreal Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, April 6, 1992
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas, April 20, 1992
Developmental Biology Seminar Series, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Ohio, November 10, 1992
Genetics and Development Seminar Series, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2, 1990
Rockefeller University, New York, New York, June 19, 1990
New England Biolabs, Beverly, Massachusetts, June 28, 1990
Gunter Sachs Postdoctoral Winter Symposium, The Salk Institute, San Diego, California, January 11 and 12, 1989
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, January 27, 1989
Life Sciences Meeting for CUSBEA, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 21, 1989
International Anniversary Congress on Prospects in Protein Engineering, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, August 14-18, 1989
Oxford University, Oxford, UK, September, 1989
Schering-Plough Corp., Newark, New Jersey, March 28, 1988
FASEB Summer Research Conference on Yeast RNA, Vermont Academy, Saxtons River, Vermont, June 12-17, 1988
Sandoz Inc., Basel, Switzerland , September 1, 1988
Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne, Germany, September 2, 1988
Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tubingen, Germany, September, 1988
Department of Biology, Peking University, Beijing, China, August, 1987
Genetics Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, August, 1987
Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Canada, July 27, 1987
Publications, Most Recent
Jun Ma's publications as listed by PubMed.
Earlier publications listed by PubMed.
Song Y, He F, XIe G, Guo X, Xu Y, Chen Y, Liang X, Stagljar I, Egli D, Ma J, Jiao R. CAF-1 is essential for Drosophila development and involved in the maintenance of epigenetic memory. Dev Biol. In Press, 2007.
Baird-Titus J, Clark-Baldwin K, Dave V, Caperelli CA, Ma J, Rance M. The solution structure of the native K50 Bicoid homeodomain to the consensus TAATCC DNA-binding site. J Mol Biol, 2006;356:1137-51.
Ma J. (Ed.) (2006). Gene Expression and Regulation, A Current Scientific Frontiers Book. Higher Education Press & Springer, Beijing-New York.
Ma J. (2006). Transcriptional activators and activation mechanisms. In: Gene Expression and Regulation (Ed. J Ma), pp 147-158, Higher Education Press & Springer, Beijing-New York.
Fu D, Ma J. Interplay between positive and negative activities that influence the role of Bicoid in transcription. Nucl Acids Res, 2005;33:3985-93.
Chaney BA, Clark-Baldwin K, Dave V, Ma J, Rance M. Solution structure of the K50 class homeodomain PITX2 bound to DNA and implications for mutations that cause Rieger syndrome. Biochemistry, 2005;44:7497-511.
Ma J. Crossing the line between activation and repression. Trends in Genetics, 2005;21:54-9.
Fu D, Wen Y, Ma J. The co-activator CREB-binding protein participates in enhancer-dependent activities of Bicoid. J Biol Chem, 2004;279:48725-33.
Ma J, Ptashne M. A new class of yeast transcriptional activators. Cell, 1987;51:113-9. Reprinted in part in: Cell, 2004;S116.
Ma J. Actively seeking activating sequences. Cell, 2004;S116:75-6.
Zhao C, Fu D, Dave V, Ma J. A composite motif of the Drosophila morphogenetic protein Bicoid critical to transcription control and pattern formation. J Biol Chem, 2003;278:43901-09.
Fu D, Zhao C, Ma J. Enhancer sequences influence the role of the amino terminal domain of Bicoid in transcription. Mol Cell Biol, 2003;23:4439-48.
Leung TC, Bischof J, Soll I, Niessing D, Zhang D, Ma J, Jackle H, Driever W. bozozok directly represses bmp2b transcription and mediates the earliest dorsoventral asymmetry of bmp2b expression in zebrafish. Development, 2003;130:3639-49.
Zeng X, Zhang D, Dorsey M, Ma J. Hypomutable regions of yeast TFIIB in a unigenic evolution test represent structural domains. Gene, 2003;309:49-56.
Zhao C, Dave V, Fu D, York A, Ma J. Insights into the molecular functions of the Drosophila morphogenetic protein Bicoid. Recent Res Devel Mol Cell Biol, 2003;4:115-26.
Zhang D, Carson DJ, Ma J. The role of TFIIB-RNA polymerase II interaction in start site selection in yeast cells. Nucl Acids Res, 2002;30:3078-85.
Zhao C, York A, Yang F, Forsthoefel DJ, Dave V, Fu D, Zhang D, Corado MS, Small S, Seeger MA, Ma J. The activity of the Drosophila morphogenetic protein Bicoid is inhibited by a domain located outside its homeodomain. Development, 2002;129:1669-80.
Zhao C, Dave V, Yang F, Scarborough T, Ma J. Target selectivity of Bicoid is dependent on non-consensus site recognition and protein-protein interaction. Mol Cell Biol, 2000;20:8112-23
Dave V, Zhao C, Yang F, Tung C-S, Ma J. Reprogrammable recognition codes in Bicoid homeodomain-DNA interaction. Mol Cell Biol, 2000;20:7673-84.
Zhang DY, Dorsey MJ, Voth WP, Carson DJ, Zeng X, Stillman DJ, Ma J. Intramolecular interaction of yeast TFIIB in transcription control. Nucl Acids Res, 2000;28:1913-20.
Ma J. (2000). Yeast transcriptional activation and the two-hybrid system. In: Yeast Hybrid Technologies. BioTechniques/Eaton Publishing. Eds. L Zhu and GJ Hannon. pp3-12.
Related Areas
This person works in these other areas at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center:
