The primary focus of the Fox laboratory is to understand the mechanism and evolution of ribosomes, which are responsible for all coded protein synthesis. Early ribosomes are thought to predate the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms, and therefore likely existed in some form at the dawn of life. Modern ribosomes are very complex molecular machines and much of this complexity has been added over evolutionary time. The Fox lab is attempting to understand the relative order of addition of the various subsystems and how the machine actually works.

Because ribosomes are dynamic RNA machines, their history has relevance to the hypothetical RNA World that is championed in the Origin of Life Research Community. From the Fox lab’s perspective, the importance of RNA means we must understand RNA structure and dynamics. Thus, the lab demonstrated the utility of comparative analysis in determining RNA structure and discovered RNA nanopores, one of which is central to ribosome function. In addition, the lab located pivot points in the RNA that are associated with ribosome motions.

As the co-discoverer of the Archaea, Dr. Fox was one of the first to use rRNA sequence information to elucidate evolutionary relationships between different types of bacteria and thereby established the first “tree of life” that encompassed procaryotes. These technologies have evolved and now routinely utilize NextGen sequencing. The Fox group continues to participate in a modest way. The focus is primarily on organisms that are important in space flight or utilized as model organisms for bacterial survival in extreme planetary environments.