Previous Research

Postdoctoral work with Dr. Howard Goodman

The Arabidopsis zinc finger project began in the Goodman lab at Massachusetts General Hospital

Graduate work with Dr. Maarten Chrispeels

My work as a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. M. Chrispeels used yeast and tobacco as model systems for determining organellar targeting signals on plant proteins. Collaborative work showed that the C-terminal signal -KDEL* in conjunction with a signal peptide allowed ER targeting of a normally vacuolar protein. My thesis work examined the vacuolar targeting domain of the plant protein phytohemagglutinin, (PHA). Fusion proteins were generated between portions of PHA and the yeast secreted protein invertase. A small domain near the N-terminus of PHA was sufficient for targeting of this yeast protein to yeast vacuoles and to tobacco vacuoles. Vacuolar targeting has become an important means of increasing the percent of total protein produced by a transgene in transgenic plants.

Chrispeels, MJ and BW Tague. (1991) Protein sorting in the secretory system of plant cells. International Rev. Cytology 125: 1-45.

Tague, BW, CD Dickinson and MJ Chrispeels. (1990) A short domain of the plant vacuolar protein phytohemagglutinin targets invertase to the yeast vacuole. The Plant Cell 2: 533-546.

Herman, EM, BW Tague, LM Hoffman, SE Kjemtrup and MJ Chrispeels. (1990) Retention of phytohemagglutinin with carboxyterminal tetrapeptide KDEL in the nuclear envelope and the endoplasmic reticulum. Planta 182: 305-312.

Tague, BW, and MJ Chrispeels. (1987) The plant vacuolar protein, phytohemagglutinin, is transported to the vacuoles of transgenic yeast. Jour. Cell Biol. 105: 1971-1979.

Undergraduate work with Dr. Susan Gerbi

My work in Dr. S. Gerbi's lab involved the determination of the primary structure of the Xenopus laevis rDNA and, by inference, the rRNA. This was a collaborative effort that represents approximately 10 people-years of work, an undertaking difficult to imagine in this day of sequencing genomes. The sequencing work led to testable models for the secondary structure of Xenopus 28S rRNA and for rRNA processing.

Tague, BW and SA Gerbi. (1984) Processing of the large rRNA precursor: two proposed categories of RNA-RNA interactions in eukaryotes. Jour. Molec. Evol. 20: 362-367.


Clark, GC, BW Tague, VC Ware and SA Gerbi. (1984) Xenopus laevis 28S ribosomal RNA: a secondary structure model and its evolutionary and functional implications. Nucleic Acids Res. 15: 6197-6220.


Ware, VC, BW Tague, CG Clark, RL Gourse, RC Brand and SA Gerbi. (1983) Sequence analysis of 28S ribosomal DNA from the amphibian Xenopus laevis. Nucleic Acids Res. 11: 7795-7817.