Office: 843-792-0491
Lab: 843-792-0281
Fax: 843-792-8568
Email: bastia@musc.edu
BSB-518A

Research Interests

The primary focus of our laboratory is on the investigations of the molecular mechanisms of replication fork arrest, genome stability, checkpoint controls using Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe as model systems. These are topics of intense current interest not only from the perspectives of eukaryotic DNA transactions but also of Cancer Biology. Our laboratory is also interested in the molecular analysis of the human “timeless” protein and TIPIN (timeless-interacting protein).

Our laboratory offers outstanding training in nucleic acids biochemistry, enzymology of DNA replication and on protein nucleic acids and protein-protein interactions.

Selected Publications

Click here to view Publications on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed online database.

• Bastia, D., Zzaman, S., Krings, G., Saxena, M, Peng, X. and Greenberg, M.M. (2008) Mechanism of replication termination as revealed by Tus-mediated polar arrest of a sliding helicase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA 105, 12831-12836.
• Swan, M., Bastia, D. and Davies, C. (2006) Crystal structure of the Pi-iteron complex of plasmid R6K: Implications for initiation of plasmid DNA replication. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA. 103, 18481-18486.
• Krings, G. and Bastia, D. (2006) Molecular architecture of an eukaryotic replication terminus-terminator protein complex. Mol. Cell. Biol. 26, 8061-8074
• Bastia, D and Mohanty, B. K. (2006). Termination of DNA Replication, In DNA replication and human disease (ed. M.L. DePamphilis), pp. 155-174. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
• Mohanty, B. K., Bairwa, N.K. and D. Bastia (2006) The Tof1p-Csm3p protein complex counteracts the rrm3p helicase to control replication termination of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA,103, 897-902
• S. Zzaman and D. Bastia (2005) Oligomeric Initiator Protein-Mediated DNA Looping Negatively Regulates Plasmid Replication In Vitro by Preventing Origin Melting Mol.Cell 20, 833-843
• Krings, G. and Bastia, D. (2004) swi1- and swi3-dependent and independent replication fork arrest at the ribosomal DNA of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. PNAS, 101(39): 14085-14090.
• Mohanty, B.K. and Bastia, D. (2004) Binding of the Replication Terminator Protein Fob1p to the Ter Sites of Yeast Causes Polar Fork Arrest. J. Biol. Chem., 279(3): 1932-1941.
• Abhyankar, M.M., Zzaman, S., and Bastia, D. (2003) Reconstitution of R6K DNA Replication in Vitro Using 22 Purified Proteins. J. Biol. Chem., 278(46):  45476-45484.
• Sharma, R., Kachroo, A. and Bastia, D. (2001) Mechanistic aspects of DnaA-RepA interaction as revealed by yeast forward and reverse two-hybrid analysis. EMBO J., 20(16): 4577-4587.
• Mulugu, S., Potnis, A., Shamsuzzaman, Taylor, J., Alexander, K. and Bastia, D. (2001) Mechanism of termination of DNA replication of Escherichia coli involves helicase-contrahelicase interaction. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 98(17): 9569-9574.
• Gautam, A., Mulugu, S., Alexander, K. and Bastia, D. (2001) A single domain of the replication termination protein of Bacillus subtilis is involved in arresting both DnaB helicase and RNA polymerase. J. Biol. Chem., 276(26): 23471-23479.
• Mohanty, B.K., Bussiere, D.E., Sahoo, T., Pai, K.S., Meijer, W.J., Bron, S. and Bastia, D. (2001) Structural and functional analysis of a bipolar replication terminus. Implications for the origin of polarity of fork arrest. J. Biol. Chem., 276(16): 13160-13168.
• Gautam, A. and Bastia, D. (2001) A replication terminus located at or near a replication checkpoint of Bacillus subtilis functions independently of stringent control. J. Biol. Chem., 276(12): 8771-8777.
• Bussiere, D.E. and Bastia, D. (1999) Termination of DNA replication of bacterial and plasmid chromosomes. Mol. Microbiol., 31(6): 1611-1618.
• Datta, H.J., Khatri, G.S. and Bastia, D. (1999) Mechanism of recruitment of DnaB helicase to the replication origin of the plasmid pSC101. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 96(1): 73-78.
• Lu, Y.B., Datta, H.J. and Bastia, D. (1998) Mechanistic studies of initiator-initiator interaction and replication initiation. EMBO J., 17(17): 5192-5200.
• Mohanty, B.K., Sahoo, T. and Bastia, D. (1998) Mechanistic studies on the impact of transcription on sequence-specific termination of DNA replication and vice versa. J. Biol. Chem., 273(5): 3051-3059.
• Manna, A., Pai, K.S., Bussiere, D., Davies, C., White, S. and Bastia, D. (1996) Helicase-Contrahelicase interaction and the mechanism of termination of DNA replication. Cell, 87(5): 881-891.