How do you prove, in a laboratory setting studying objects in size just one-thousandth of the diameter of a hair, that something is doing what it is designed to do? The Walter Lab at the University of Michigan is doing just that, through single-molecule fluorescence imaging and tracking, and recently for a tiny nano engine…
Rooted firmly in his lab suite tucked deep within the core of the Pentagon-esque Medical Sciences Research Building (MSRB) complex on the University of Michigan campus, John Prensner, M.D., Ph.D., is focused on bringing to light an area of genomic investigation involving a hive of “worker bees” called noncanonical ORFs (open reading frames), that play…
The discovery of insulin has saved the lives of millions of people with diabetes worldwide, but little is known about the first step of insulin synthesis. Researchers at the University of Michigan have uncovered part of this mystery. Examining messenger RNAs involved in the production of insulin in fruit flies, they found that a chemical…
A University of Michigan team of biochemists, led by Kristin Koutmou, Ph.D., and Markos Koutmos, Ph.D., Assistant Professors in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Biophysics, is reframing the understanding of the biology of a class of enzymes called Pseudouridine Synthases (Pus enzymes). These enzymes modify many types of RNAs, and the Koutmou and…
Sami Barmada, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Neurology and member of the Center for RNA Biomedicine, with Nathaniel Safren, Ph.D., from Northwestern University, and other UM colleagues, was awarded “Editor’s pick” by the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). This recognition signals “a top-rated paper published in JBC across the field of biological chemistry, as determined by JBC’s Associate Editors, Editorial Board…
Exploring the mechanisms involved in sleep-dependent memory storage, a team of University of Michigan (U-M) cellular biologists found that RNAs associated with an understudied cell compartment in hippocampal neurons vary greatly between sleeping and sleep-deprived mice after learning. Sara Aton, Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and James Delorme, a…
By Morgan Sherburne, Michigan News Bacteria need to constantly adapt to compete against other species for nutrient sources and to survive against threats such as antibiotics and toxins. In an effort to understand how bacteria control and regulate this adaptation, University of Michigan researchers from the Center for RNA Biomedicine are examining how RNA polymerase—the…
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) constitute the new frontier of investigation for molecular biologists. However, lncRNA is inconsistently defined, which fails the research community in several ways. In a scientific review [2], Professor Andrzej Wierzbicki from the University of Michigan, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and collaborators challenge the contemporary ways of understanding lncRNAs…
While some students may think it’s a good idea to pull an all-nighter before an exam, conventional wisdom may be correct: a good night’s sleep may actually be more helpful, according to University of Michigan research. U-M scientists Sara Aton and James Delorme found when mice are sleep deprived, there is an increase in activity…
by Elisabeth Paymal Often overlooked because they might not alter the amino acid production, splicing defects can play an important role in rare genetic pituitary gland diseases. Several clinical endocrinologists and bioinformaticians, led by Sally Camper and Jacob Kitzman, Professors of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS), came together to further…
by Elisabeth Paymal In an article published in the journal RNA [1] , Karan Bedi, a bioinformatician in Mats Ljungman’s lab, Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School, investigated the efficiency of splicing across different human cell types. The results were surprising in that the splicing process appears to be quite…
Neurons result from a highly complex and unique series of cell divisions. For example, in fruit flies, the process starts with stem cells that divide into mother cells (progenitor cells), that then divide into precursor cells that eventually become neurons. A team of the University of Michigan (U-M), spearheaded by Nigel Michki, a graduate student,…
ANN ARBOR—To better understand how RNA in bacteria gives rise to protein—and along the way, target these processes in the design of new antibiotics—researchers are turning their attention to the unique way this process happens in bacteria. In eukaryotic cells, transcription (the process by which information in a DNA strand is copied into messenger RNA)…
In our September 2020 issue of RNA Translated, 2020 the year of the RNA virus, we presented how University of Michigan (U-M) Center for RNA Biomedicine’s scientists pivoted their research to address the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them is Dr. Chinnaiyan and his team of prostate cancer researchers who focused on two proteins that are…
“Over the years, studies have found that more than 80% of the genome may be involved in transcription, or producing noncoding RNA,” said Andrzej Wierzbicki, a professor in the University of Michigan Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. “So the dilemma was: Is all this noncoding RNA functional? Is it important for something? Or…
The observation of single biomolecules in real-time is crucial for our understanding of the cellular biology that is assembled from these molecules, be they DNA, RNA or protein. The recent development of an array of tools and techniques for single-molecule analysis allows studies at an extremely small scale (nanometers, or 10-9 meters) over short periods…
A cross-disciplinary team of scientists from the University of Michigan (U-M) has developed a biochemical technique that successfully measures the number of individual protein molecules present in blood at low concentrations. These findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), September 2020. The scientists developed special antibody probes that…
By Elisabeth Paymal A team of scientists associated with the University of Michigan Center for RNA Biomedicine discovered unexpected cellular adaptation mechanisms in response to dehydration. The observed protein reaction has never been reported before. The research began while observing processing bodies (P-Bodies), which are membrane-less organelles (MLO) involved in RNA degradation in human cells….
by Elisabeth Paymal One of the hallmarks of ovarian cancer is genomic instability resulting in gain and loss of DNA throughout the entire genome, including many microRNAs (miRNA). Dr. DiFeo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pathology and of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Michigan Medicine, and her team, research which miRNAs are involved in the early stages…
By Adam Diehl, Alan Boyle, and Elisabeth Paymal, Center for RNA Biomedicine Until recently, little was known about how transposable elements contribute to gene regulation. These are little pieces of DNA that can replicate themselves and spread out in the genome. Although they make up nearly half of the human genome, these were often ignored…
