Event
Cotranscriptional RNA folding and processing in biology and disease
Dr. Angela Yu, University of Washington
Abstract: RNA structure formation happens cotranscriptionally, in other words while RNAs are being synthesized, and occurs in the order of microseconds. In addition, RNA regulation processes such as splicing and polyadenylation occur cotranscriptionally, and these processes have been implicated in a plethora of diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy. While therapeutics may be able to target and correct these processes, we still lack a complete understanding of how RNA cotranscriptional folding mediates these processes, presenting a barrier to designing effective therapeutics. In this talk I will discuss my previous and ongoing work on cotranscriptional RNA structure characterization and prediction, anti-cancer drug-induced inhibition of polyadenylation, and variant effects on RNA splicing. RNA structure probing, massively parallel reporter assays (MPRA’s), and machine learning are key tools utilized in these research projects and revealed sequence-dependent effects on cotranscriptional RNA structure and processing. My future work aims to discover fundamental principles of dynamic RNA folding that influence RNA processing and translating this understanding into the development of new RNA therapeutics.