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Professor, The University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
B.S., Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 1984
Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, 1991
Postdoc, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 1991-95
Modeling human disease and development in the mouse
Our laboratory is interested in elucidating genetic mechanisms that control normal development and are disrupted in pathological situations such as congenital birth defects and cancer. Current research interests are divided into three areas: dorsal-ventral limb patterning, ocular development and disease, and a novel tumor suppressor pathway called “Hippo” that was recently discovered in Drosophila. Our experimental approach is to generate mouse models that contain conditional and/or tagged alleles and to use these mice to study gain and loss of function phenotypes for critical regulators of mammalian growth and patterning.
Selected Publications
>Kang DH, Kanellis J, Hugo C, Truong L, Anderson S, Kerjaschki D, Schreiner GF, Johnson RL (2002) Role of the microvascular endothelium in progressive renal disease. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 13:806-816.
Chen H, Johnson RL (2002) Interactions between dorsal-ventral patterning genes lmx1b, engrailed-1 and wnt-7a in the vertebrate limb. International Journal of Developmental Biology 46:937-941.
Chen YT, Kobayashi A, Kwan KM, Johnson RL, Behringer RR (2006) Gene expression profiles in developing nephrons using Lim1 metanephric mesenchyme-specific conditional mutant mice. BMC Nephrology 7:1.
Seo KW, Wang Y, Kokubo H, Kettlewell JR, Zarkower DA, Johnson RL (2006) Targeted disruption of the DM domain containing transcription factor Dmrt2 reveals an essential role in somite patterning. Developmental Biology 290:200-210.
Allton K, Jain AK, Herz HM, Tsai WW, Jung SY, Qin J, Bergmann A, Johnson RL, Barton MC (2009) Trim24 targets endogenous p53 for degradation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106:11612-11616.
Liu P, Johnson RL (2010) Lmx1b is required for murine trabecular meshwork formation and for maintenance of corneal transparency. Developmental Dynamics 239:2161-2171.
Lu L, Li Y, Kim SM, Bossuyt W, Liu P, Qiu Q, Wang Y, Halder G, Finegold MJ, Lee JS, Johnson RL (2010) Hippo signaling is a potent in vivo growth and tumor suppressor pathway in the mammalian liver. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107:1437-1442.
Halder G, Johnson RL (2011) Hippo signaling: growth control and beyond. Development 138:9-22.
Heallen T, Zhang M, Wang J, Bonilla-Claudio M, Klysik E, Johnson RL, Martin JF (2011) Hippo pathway inhibits Wnt signaling to restrain cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart size. Science 332:458-461.
Liu P, Fu X, Johnson RL (2011) Efficient in vivo doxycycline and cre recombinase-mediated inducible transgene activation in the murine trabecular meshwork. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 52:969-974.
Contact Information
Randy L. Johnson, Ph.D.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The University of Texas
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
1515 Holcombe Boulevard, S11.8136B
Houston, Texas 77030, U.S.A.
Tel: (713) 834-6287
Fax: (713) 834-6291
E-mail: