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Dr. Johnson joined the Biomolecular Screening and Profiling Division of the NCGC to implement assays for high throughput screening and to profile chemical probes and their targets. Broadly trained in molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics, Dr. Johnson has worked in academia and industry researching cell-cell signaling, development, and oncology.
In graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, he studied a family of G-protein coupled receptors that bind extracellular cAMP and explored their role in controlling Dictyostelium development. His postdoctoral studies at Stanford University involved research on the control of Hedgehog signaling in Drosophila and vertebrates and culminated in the discovery that human PATCHED1 is mutated in basal cell carcinoma. Dr. Johnson continued research in his own lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham investigating the molecular mechanisms by which Patched1 controls Hedgehog signaling.
In 2001 Dr. Johnson joined Human Genome Sciences to learn target discovery and drug development. There his lab implemented protein and cell based assays to support clinical oncology trials with and studied the TRAIL and BLyS signaling pathways. Dr. Johnson joined NCGC in 2004 to apply systems approaches to the study of biological processes, especially those related to signal transduction and oncogenesis.
Selected publications:
- Johnson, R.L., P.J.M. Van Haastert, A.R. Kimmel, C.L. Saxe, B. Jasteroff, and P.N. Devreotes (1992) The cyclic nucleotide specificity of three cAMP receptors in Dictyostelium. J. Biol. Chem. 267, 4600-4607.
- Johnson, R.L., C.L. Saxe, R. Gollop, A.R. Kimmel, and P.N. Devreotes (1993) Identification and targeted gene disruption of cAR3, a cAMP receptor subtype expressed during multicellular stages of Dictyostelium development. Genes Dev. 7, 273-282.
- Goodrich, L.V., R.L. Johnson, L. Milenkovic, J. A. McMahon, and M.P. Scott (1996) Conservation of the hedgehog/patched signaling pathway from flies to mice: induction of a mouse patched gene by Hedgehog. Genes Dev. 10, 301-312.
- Johnson, R.L., A.L. Rothman, J.Xie, L.V. Goodrich, J.W. Bare, J.M. Bonifas, A.G. Quinn, R.M. Meyers, D.R. Cox, E.H. Epstein Jr., and M.P. Scott (1996) Human homolog of patched, a candidate gene for the Basal Cell Nevus Syndrome. Science 272, 1668-1671.
- Johnson, R.L., L. Milenkovic, and M.P. Scott (2000) In vivo functions of the Patched protein: requirement of the C terminus for target gene inactivation but not Hedgehog binding. Molecular Cell 6, 467-478.
- Bailey, E.C., L, Zhou, and R.L. Johnson (2003) Several Human PATCHED1 Mutations Block Protein Maturation. Cancer Res. 63, 1636-1638.
- L Pukac, P Kanakaraj, R Humphreys, R Alderson, M Bloom, C Sung, T Riccobene, R Johnson, M Fiscella, A Mahoney, J Carrell, E Boyd, XT Yao, L Zhang, L Zhong, A von Kerczek, L Shepard,T Vaughan, B Edwards, C Dobson, T Salcedo and V Albert (2005) HGS-ETR1, a fully human TRAIL-receptor 1 monoclonal antibody, induces cell death in multiple tumour types in vitro and in vivo. Brit J Cancer 92, 1430-1441.
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