Jordan Bloom

Jordan Bloom is a graduate student in the Microbial Doctoral Training Program, who began in the McNeel lab in January 2012.

Cancer-testis antigens (CTAs) are a group of proteins almost exclusively expressed in testis germline cells and not at all in somatic cells (Scanlan et al., 2004). Aberrant expression of CTAs are a common occurrence in many different types of cancer (Smith and McNeel, 2010). One such family of CTAs is the SSX gene family. There are ten members of the SSX CT-X family (Smith et al., 2011) with a high degree of homology amongst them. Although the function of the SSX proteins has yet to be fully elucidated, domains found in all of the family members may point to the function. SSX family members have been shown to possess a Kruppel-associated box, or KRAB domain, and an SSX repression domain (SSXRD) (Smith and McNeel, 2010). The KRAB domain and the SSXRD have both been shown to act as transcriptional repressor domains through reporter assays, and the targets of these domains are still unknown (Lim et al., 1998).

Jordan's work focuses on further understanding the expression patterns and function of the SSX family of proteins.