Jaya G Yodh

Jaya G Yodh's profile

Jaya G Yodh
Jaya G Yodh

Research Assistant Professor

Professor Jaya Yodh received her B.A. in biochemistry from Cornell University in 1987 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1993 from Johns Hopkins University. Her postdoctoral training was funded by an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship and was carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology from 1993-1996 and Arizona State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1996-1997. From 1997-2006, Dr. Yodh was employed as a professor of biochemistry at Midwestern University, Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, a teaching institution dedicated to training students in the health professions. She moved to University of Illinois in 2006 as a Research Assistant Professor/Lecturer in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology until 2008 when she transferred to the Department of Physics. Her research at the University of Illinois has been carried out within the Single-Molecule Biophysics group headed by Taekjip Ha.

Professor Yodh's research utilizes a combination of biochemical, molecular biology, and biophysical approaches to investigate how DNA metabolism occurs in a chromatin context. Specific areas of focus include 1) DNA motors such as helicase enzymes that catalyze NTP-dependent unwinding of duplex DNA into single-strands, a reaction essential for processes of DNA replication, repair, recombination, and transcription, and 2) Chromatin structures that package eukaryotic DNA, and how nucleosomal DNA becomes accessible to transcription and DNA repair machinery in the cell.

Professor Yodh's graduate training with Floyd Bryant centered on the kinetic mechanism of the E. Coli UvrD DNA repair helicase enzyme. Her postdoctoral work with Robert Kingston at MA General Hospital studied how histone modifications impact the binding of eukaryotic transcription factors to nucleosomal DNA. During her postdoctoral training with Dennis Lohr at Arizona State University, she began investigating chromatin structure using atomic force microscopy (AFM). She continued this collaboration during her professorship at Midwestern University leading to a series of publications on AFM analysis of structural features of reconstituted chromatin arrays in the presence of histone acetylation and chromatin remodelers.

Description of Current Research

Professor Yodh's current research in the laboratory of Taekjip Ha in the Department of Physics at University of Illinois continues to apply single-molecule (sm) approaches to study helicase and chromatin systems. One project has probed the mechanism of unwinding by the human RecQ helicases which are mutated in diseases associated with genome instability and cancer. Single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET) was utilized to discover a repetitive unwinding activity by human Bloom Syndrome helicase (BLM) that involves strand switching after a critical length of DNA is unwound. Currently, Dr. Yodh is working with members of the Ha and Chemla groups to develop chromatin templates for analysis using smFRET as well as combined optical trap/single-molecule fluorescence detection technologies (aka ‘fleezers’). These techniques are being used to probe dynamics of nucleosome unwrapping including the effects of histone modifications/variants. Ultimately, we hope to examine the activity of enzymes such as helicases and chromatin remodelers in these chromatin systems.

Teaching

During Summers of 2007 and 2008, Professor Yodh was also a Lecturer in the UIUC School of Molecular and Cellular Biology. She taught MCB 450 ‘Introductory Biochemistry’ for non-majors.

Outreach

Since 2008, Professor Yodh has also served as Director of Education and Outreach for The Center for the Physics of Living Cells, an NSF-funded Physics Frontier Center at the University of Illinois. In this position, she directs upper level outreach activities such as the CPLC Summer School, now in its third year, the Junior Nanotech Network (JNN) student exchange program with LMU-Munich in 2010, and the Illinois branch of the POLS-SRN: Physics of Living Systems Student Research Network, an NSF-funded initiative between biological physics groups at Illinois, UCSD, Yale, and Princeton. The goal of these efforts is to create a global network of next-generation scientists studying the physics of biological systems. Dr. Yodh also supervises Center outreach efforts directed towards the K-12 and general public populations, and functions as the Center's administrative manager.

Selected Publications

  • Yodh, J. (2013) ATP-Dependent Chromatin Remodeling. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2013;767:263-95.
  • Yodh J.G., Schlierf, M., Ha, T. (2010) In sight into helicase mechanism and function revealed through single-molecule approaches. Quarterly Review of Biophysics 43(2):185-217
  • Yodh, J.G., B.C. Stevens, K. Radhakrishnan, P. Janscak and T. Ha, (2009) BLM helicase measures DNA unwound before switching strands and hRPA promotes unwinding reinitiation. The EMBO Journal 28: 405-416.
  • Kelbauskas L, Yodh J, Woodbury N, Lohr D. (2009), Intrinsic promoter nucleosome stability/dynamics variations support a novel targeting mechanism. Biochemistry 48(20):4217-9
  • Lohr, D., Bash, R., Wang, H. Yodh, J., and S. Lindsay (2007). Using atomic force microscopy to study chromatin structure and nucleosome remodeling. Methods 41(3): 333-341.
  • Kelbauskas, L., Chan, N., Bash, R., Yodh, J. Woodbury, N., and D. Lohr (2007). Sequence-dependent nucleosome structure and stability variations detected by Forster Resonance Energy Transfer. Biochemistry 46(8): 2239-48.
  • R. Bash, H. Wang, C. Anderson, J. Yodh, G. Hager, S.M. Lindsay, and D. Lohr (2006), "AFM imaging of proteins movements: Histone H2A-H2B release during nucleosome remodeling." FEBS Letters 580: 4757-4761.
  • H. Wang, R. Bash, J. G. Yodh, G. Hager, S. M. Lindsay, and D. Lohr (2004). Using Atomic Force Microscopy to Study Nucleosome Remodeling on Individual Nucleosomal Arrays in Situ. Biophysical J. 87, 1964-1971.
  • Bash, R., Wang, H., Yodh, J., Hager, G., Lindsay, S. M., and Lohr, D. (2003) Nucleosomal arrays can be salt-reconstituted on a single-copy MMTV promoter DNA template: Their properties differ in several ways from those of comparable 5S concatameric arrays. Biochemistry 42(16), 4681 - 4690.
  • Wang, H., Bash, R., Yodh, J. G., Hager, G. L., Lohr, D., and Lindsay, S. M. (2002) Glutaraldehyde modified mica: A new surface for atomic force microscopy of chromatin. Biophysical J. 83, 3619-3625.
  • Yodh, J. G., Woodbury, N., Shlyatenko, L., Lyubchenko, Y., and Lohr, D. (2002) Mapping nucleosome locations on the 208-12 by AFM provides clear evidence for cooperativity in array occupation. Biochemistry 41(11), 3565-3574.
  • Yodh, J.G., Lyubchenko, Y., Shlyatenko, L, Woodbury, N., and Lohr, D (1999) Evidence for non-random behavior in 208-12 subsaturated nucleosomal array populations analyzed by AFM. Biochemistry 38(48),15764-15733.
  • Yodh, J. G. and Bryant, F. R. (1993) Kinetics of ATP hydrolysis during the DNA helicase II - promoted unwinding of duplex DNA. Biochemistry 32, 7765-7771.

Contact Information

Office
320 Loomis Laboratory

Phone
217.244.1155

Email
jyodh@illinois.edu

Areas of Research