James W Brown

Biography

I was born in Atlanta (Georgia), and lived in Dade City (Florida), Bloomington (Indiana), Lima (Peru), and Muncie (Indiana) while growing up. I attended Ball State University starting in 1976 as a Biology major, with chemistry and anthropology minors. My undergraduate research examined sulfide-oxidizing Beggiatoa in a southern Indiana sulfur spring. After receiving my B.S. in 1980, I joined the graduate program in microbiology at Miami University, where I worked on Glycine max tissue culture mRNAs with Prof. Ronald Treick. After obtaining an M.S. degree in microbiology in 1982, I moved to the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Program at The Ohio State University to work on the molecular biology of methanogenic Archaea with Prof. John Reeve. While there, I worked on polyadenylation of mRNAs and RNA polymerase/promoters in Archaea, and received my Ph.D. in 1988. Then on to Indiana University for five years of postdoctoral work in Prof. Norm Pace's lab on the comparative analysis of the structure of a bacterial ribozyme, RNase P.

In January of 1994, I started as a faculty member in Department of Microbiology at North Carolina State University. Research in my lab focused on the comparative analysis of RNA, and in particular RNase P in Archaea, to understand the evolutionary history of this ribozyme, and more generally to gain insight into microbial diversity, the "RNA World" stage of the early history of life, and develop tools and perspectives for the analysis of molecular structure and evolution of RNA. With the 2013 College realignment I moved to the new Department of Biological Sciences, and the College of Science, and served as Associate Head of Biological Sciences. I entered phased retirement in 2020, and will fully retire in 2022. I am Professor (emeritis) of Biological Sciences.

As of the end of Fall semester, 2021, I am retired from NCSU. My new career is owner/operators of the Bottle Creek Lodge on North Caicos Island, TCI.

Full Curriculum Vita from 2018 (PDF)

Recent teaching

MB 451 : Microbial Diversity

Molecular, biochemical and evolutionary diversity of the microbial world, including Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes. Evolutionary perspective on microbial relationships, molecular methods of study and classical and modern biotechnological methods utilizing this genetic diversity to explore the microbial world and use the resulting insight to meet the needs of our own species. The course is required for Microbiology majors, and is taught every spring semester.

Here is the textbook for this course: Principles of Microbial Diversity

MB 452 : Microbial Diversity Laboratory

This lab course is project-oriented; students perform a series of classical enrichments and isolations, starting from environmental samples collected by the students themselves. These isolations serve as the starting material for a series of modern molecular biology experiments, in which students purify DNA, amplify ribosomal DNA by PCR, and have a portion of this gene sequenced. This sequence information is the starting point for the term project, a detailed molecular phylogenetic analysis of the isolated organisms.

LSC 170 : First Year Seminar in the Life Sciences

Students interested in the life sciences enter NCSU via the Life Science First Year Program. LSC 170 course are 1 credit seminar courses that student have the option of taking to explore their interest in a specific major. I currently teach sections of LCS 170 on the topic of “Extremophiles: Life on the Edge”.

Research

My research focused primarily on the comparatove analysis of RNA structure in the "ribozyme" RNase P.

Ribonuclease P (RNase P) is a ribonuclease, present in all cells, that removes 5' leader sequences from tRNA precursor transcripts. RNase P is composed of an RNA of ca. 400 nucleotides and a single protein in Bacteria or 9-12 proteins in the eukaryotic nucleus. The RNA, rather than any protein, is the catalytic subunit; RNase P is a ribozyme. RNase P and other ribozymes are thought to be remnants of the 'RNA World', a stage in the emergence of life before the evolutionary invention of protein or DNA.

The key to understanding differences between Bacteria and eukaryotes, and the origin of eukaryotic systems generally, are the Archaea. RNase P in Archaea has properties of both the bacterial and eukaryotic forms of this enzyme. We have found that the RNA subunit of archaeal RNase P is remarkably like that of Bacteria, and quite different that that of eukaryotes. However, there are at least 4 proteins associated with this RNA, unlike the single small protein in Bacteria, and these proteins are homologs of 4 of the eukaryotic nuclear RNase P proteins and not that of the Bacteria. An understanding of the proteins and their role in RNase P function in Archaea will provide insight into the origin of both the bacterial and eukaryotic systems.

My research lab is no longer active, but there are short-term (Fall semesters) opportunities for undergraduate students to do bioinformatics projects. These are primarily the identification of RNase P RNA-encoding genes in novel genome sequences (these are rarely annotated), solving their secondary structure by comparative analysis, and then answering structural, evolutionary, or phylogegentic questions based on these structures.

Peer-reviewed publications

Theses from the Brown lab