I am a Professor at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in the Department of Biology and the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. I received a B.Sc. degree in Cellular Biology and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University Claude Bernard in Lyon, France. I came to the US for a Fulbright fellowship and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland. Before joining Johns Hopkins, I was a Professor at the University of Maryland. I am a member of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Astrophysical Sciences, the co-founder and director of the Institute for Planets and Life (https://www.stsci.edu/stsci-research/research-topics-and-programs/institute-for-planets-and-life.html), and I organize the Planets, Life, and the Universe (PLU) Lecture Serie. I am also the co-director of the Program in Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology, and Biophysics (CMDB) graduate program at JHU.
My lab's research focuses on the mechanisms of gene regulation at the post-transcriptional and translational levels in archaeal model systems. We are interested in the role of regulatory small RNA (sRNA) in the oxidative stress response of the model haloarchaeon, Haloferax volcanii. We identified a core set of oxidative stress-responsive sRNAs in H. volcanii and determined the functional role of this organism's most up-regulated intergenic sRNA. Investigations of sRNA roles and mechanisms continue in the lab, funded by NSF. We developed a protocol for ribosome profiling in archaea and exploited this approach to generate a global and high-resolution view of archaeal translation. We reported that the size of the ribosome footprint of archaea was more similar to that of the footprint of eukarya than bacteria. The ability to do ribosome profiling in Haloferax has launched an NSF-funded project investigating the mechanisms of ribosome rescue and recycling in archaea using oxidative stress and viral infections as translational stressors. Using CRISPRi screens, we identified putative rescue factors in H. volcanii, which we are characterizing using genetics and biochemistry approaches.
A complete list of publications can be found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/jocelyne.di.1/bibliography/public/