Computerized analysis and prediction of RNA structure and function

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) are among the most crucial molecules of the cell. So far, more than 600 different RNA families have been found. One of them, microRNAs, is found involved in how our genes are produced. This function is key to our immune system, to how our cells differentiate and specialize, to how cancer develops and progresses, and how our cells decide to die. It is believed that building artificial molecular devices to control these cellular mechanisms will help resolve many problems in human health and therapeutics, but also in food and energy production, and environment. However, before we can engineer such effective devices we need to understand in details how the cell adopt its behaviours in function of its gene production. In fact, it is believe that the cell functions using a very complex gene regulatory network, where each gene has an effect on several others. Recently, RNA-based devices have been engineered to process and transmit simple cellular information by reading and targeting the gene regulatory network. In some ways, these devices can be seen as small computers that act on the gene regulatory networks. In order to build such cellular computers, we need to know the three-dimensional structures of their RNA components. However, technical problems refrain us from resolving these structures using classical experimental methods (for example X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance). Dr. Major is an expert in the development of computational methods to determine RNA three-dimensional structures, an alternative to costly experimental approaches. He recently introduced a new approach that is very promising, which was published this year in the renowned journal Nature. In this grant proposal, he proposes to develop further this new approach to especially explore and analyze the dynamic components of RNA-based cellular computers. He aims at putting his new algorithms in the hands of the experimentalists, since rapidly and reliably producing precise and accurate RNA 3D structures will yield immense benefits to the biotechnology and biomedical fields. During the term of this research, Dr. Major will train two to three postdoctoral trainees and three to four PhD students.