My current research is focused in two main areas.

My laboratory is an active member of the new National Technology Center for Networks and Pathways. We are developing novel biosensors that will detect the activation of specific kinases, phosphatases, proteases and other signaling enzymes in mammalian cells. We are isolating and modifying single chain antibody molecules (scFvs) that bind and release fluorescent haptens as the platform for these biosensors.

My laboratory is also active in gene and protein discovery and genome annotation in mammalian cells. We are using "CD-tagging" technology as the main tool in this research effort. CD-tagging gives us the opportunity to identify and isolate new proteins or protein-containing structures and to identify the genes that encode them. High throughput methods are being developed to isolate tagged cells and identify the tagged gene. Tagged cell lines contain the fluorescent protein GFP and other "guest exons" that can be observed directly in the fluorescence microscope.

Selected Publications

Özhalici-Ünal H, Pow CL, Marks SA, Jesper LD, Silva GL, Shank NI, Jones EW, Burnette JM 3rd, Berget PB, Armitage BA. A Rainbow of Fluoromodules: A Promiscuous scFv Protein Binds to and Activates a Diverse Set of Fluorogenic Cyanine Dyes. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 130(38), 12620-12621, 2008.

Armitage BA and Berget PB. An Enlightening Structure-Function Relationship. Science 2008; 319: 1195-1196.

Szent-Gyorgyi C, Schmidt BA, Creeger Y, Fisher GW, Zakel KL, Adler S, Fitzpatrick JA, Woolford CA, Yan Q, Vasilev KV, Berget PB, Bruchez MP, Jarvik JW, Waggoner A. Fluorogen-activating single-chain antibodies for imaging cell surface proteins. Nature biotechnology 2008; 26: 235-240.

Jones EW, Berget PB, Burnette, III JM, Anderson C, Asafu-Adjei D, Avetisian S, Barrie F, Chen R, Chu B, Conroy SA, Conroy ST, Dill A, Eimer W, Garrity D, Greenwood A, Hamilton T, Hucko S, Jackson C, Livesey K, Monaco T, Onorato C, Otsuka M, Pai S, Schaeffer G, Shung S, Spath S, Stahlman J, Sweeney B, Wiltrout E, Yurovsky D Zonneveld A.: The Spectrum of Trp- Mutants Isolated as 5-Fluoroanthranilate Resistant Clones in Saccharomyces bayanus, Saccharomyces mikatae and Saccharomyces paradoxus. Yeast 2007; 25(1): 41-46.

Garcia Osuna E, Hua J, Bateman NW, Zhao T, Berget PB, Murphy RF. Large-Scale Automated Analysis of Location Patterns in Randomly Tagged 3T3 Cells. Ann Biomed Eng. 2007 Jun; 35(6): 1081-1087.

Banerjee D, Markley AL, Yano T, Ghosh A, Berget PB, Minkley EG Jr, Khetan SK, Collins TJ. "Green" oxidation catalysis for rapid deactivation of bacterial spores. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2006 Jun 12;45(24):3974-7.

Highlander SK, Weissenberger S, Alvarez LE, Weinstock GM, Berget PB. Complete nucleotide sequence of a P2 family lysogenic bacteriophage, MhaA1-PHL101, from Mannheimia haemolytica serotype A1. Virology. 350(1):79-89, 2006.

Jarvik JW, Fisher GW, Shi C, Hennen L, Hauser C, Adler S, Berget PB. In vivo functional proteomics: Mammalian genome annotation using CD-tagging. BioTechniques 2002; 33(4):852-866.

Telmer CA, Berget PB, Ballou B, Murphy RF, Jarvik JW. Epitope tagging genomic DNA using a CD-tagging Tn10 minitransposon. BioTechniques 2002; 32(2) 422-432.