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Our Members at The RNA Society 25th Annual Meeting

05/26/2020

May 27

2:00–4:00 pm, Concurrent Session 2, RNA Structure and Regulation

Adrien Chauvier, Pujan Ajmera, Nils Walter, Competition between ligand binding and transcription factor NusA modulates riboswitch-mediated regulation of transcription

8:00–9:00 pm, Poster Session 2, Interconnected Processes

Catherine Scull, The N-terminal region of the A12.2 subunit stimulates RNA polymerase I transcription elongation

9:00–10:00 pm, Poster Session 5, RNA Modification & Condensatio n

Meredith Purchal, Ryan McNassor, Hari Sharma, Taslima Khan, Leena Malik, Kristin Koutmou, Markos Koutmos, Structure and function of yeast pseudouridine synthase 7

9:00–10:00 pm, Poster Session 6, Origins of Life & Synthetic Biology
Sydney Rosenblum, Daniel Lorenz, Developing methods for the detection of cellular RNA-protein interactions

May 29

10:00–11:00 am, Plenary Session 3b, RNA Modification & Granules – Granules

Stephanie Moon, Coupling of translation quality control and mRNA targeting to stress granules

8:00–9:00 pm, Poster Session, Splicing & Polyadenylation
Elizabeth Duran, Nils Walter, Prp22 Remodeling of Pre-mRNA During the P-To-ILS Spliceosome Transition

8:00–9:00 pm, Poster Sessi on 7, Structure, Folding & Regulation

Ian Hall, Huaqun Zhang, Amos Nissley, Kyrillos Abdallah, Sarah Keane, Molecular Mechanisms of Regulatory RNAs from Listeria monocytogenes

8:00–9:00 pm, Poster Session 7, Structure, Folding & Regulation

Robb Welty, Nils Walter, Exon-intron junction structural ensembles: A potential gate keeper of 3’ alternative splicing

8:00–9:00 pm, Poster Session 9: Splicing & Polyadenylation
Thomas A. Whelan, C. Alisha Quandt, Timothy Y. James, Naomi M. Fast, Spliceosomal diversity and a transcriptomic analysis of Rozella allomycis

9:00–10:00 pm, Poster Session 5: RNA Modification & Condensation
Sethu Pitchiaya, Ameya Jalihal, Pushpinder Bawa, Karan Bedi, Lanbo Xiao, Xia Jiang, Marcin Cieslik, Mats Ljungman, Arul Chinnaiyan, Nils Walter, Rapid and reversible phase-separation of multivalent proteins during osmotic cell volume change modulates RNA metabolism

9:00–10:00 pm, Poster Session 10, Translation
Mehmet Tardu, Kristin Koutmou, Elucidating the role of Zuo1 protein on the translational control of gene expression in yeast cells

9:00–10:00 pm, Poster Session 11, RNA Turnover

Aaron Goldstrohm, Michael Wolfe, Trista Schagat, Michelle Paulsen, Brian Magnuson, Mats Ljungman, Daeyoon Park, Chi Zhang, Zachary Campbell, Peter Freddolino, Discovering the principles of mRNA control by human Pumilio proteins using transcriptome-wide stability measurements, in vitro affinity profiling, and integrative data analysis.

U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine hosts the RNA Collaborative Seminar Series, May 6, 2020

05/08/2020

Launched in April 2020, the goal of the RNA Collaborative seminar series is to cross-promote RNA research to strengthen and connect the RNA scientific community. Proposed by the University of Michigan (U-M) Center for RNA Biomedicine, this initiative received great enthusiasm from seven RNA research centers. The group was quickly joined by two more centers and endorsed by The RNA Society: “Your multi-institutional seminar series is a fantastic idea, and I am not surprised that it has generated interest and excitement,” wrote Kristian Baker, CEO of The RNA Society.

Two RNA Biomedicine experts are elected to the National Academy of Sciences

04/30/2020

The election of professors Janet L. Smith and Arul Chinnaiyan, both members of the Center for RNA Biomedicine Strategic Advisory Board, to the National Academy of Sciences is an outstanding validation of the excellence of the RNA research at the University of Michigan. Members are elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive. Congrats Janet and Arul!

Martina Jerant, Manager of the Center for RNA Biomedicine, receives the University of Michigan Staff Impact Award from among 75 nominees

04/24/2020

“Martina Jerant is brimming with energy, big ideas and “outside the box” thinking, which has been instrumental in achieving the Center for RNA Biomedicine’s mission to build bridges across our large campus through a broad range of activities that Martina handles essentially on her own, with little input from us, and all extraordinarily competently,” wrote the U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine (CRB) co-directors, Mats Ljungman and Nils Walter, in their nomination letter for the “U-M Staff Impact Award.”

For the last three-and-a-half years as the Manager of the CRB, initially jointly as a Lab Manager for the Walter group (LSA Chemistry), Jerant has brought creativity, positive attitude and superb interpersonal skills to everything she does. And she does a lot, initiating numerous network collaborations and contributing to the RNA scientific community, as well as engaging her colleagues in M-Healthy and stress management activities among others.

The U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine Executive Committee thanks Aaron Frank for his contributions and welcomes Markos Koutmos

04/17/2020

The grassroots Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan involves among its opt-in membership RNA scientists from across the Ann Arbor campus, encompassing all seven Schools and Colleges that are engaged in the Biosciences. The Center’s leadership reflects this diversity of viewpoints and serves to facilitate scientific collaboration.

From a rare neurologic disease to a potential antiviral medication against corona virus

04/15/2020

By Elisabeth Paymal, Center for RNA Biomedicine

As soon as COVID-19 information was released, RNA biologist and child neurologist Dr. Vivian Cheung looked at what was known about this new RNA virus.

“What I saw was amazingly surprising: the RNA of the virus encodes a familiar protein, the one that I’ve studied for years in a very rare neurodegenerative disease. Here it was, in the RNA of the COVID-19 virus!”

Left: RNA in the clover loop form. Drawing by Colleen McGarry

Making patients resilient to COVID-19: Lessons to be learned from kidney single cell analysis

04/14/2020

by Dr. Kretzler and his team, and Elisabeth Paymal, U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine

The scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving. Every day, scientists are making discoveries based on years of investment in training and expertise that resulted in the accumulation of large, shared, high quality data sets now ready to be used in the fight against the virus. Together, researchers have established lasting scientific collaborations and built robust state of the art research infrastructures that are now strongly positioned to tackle emergent questions related to the treatment and spread of disease during this COVID-19 pandemic.

As I spoke with U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine member Matthias Kretzler, M.D., University of Michigan, Department of Nephrology/Internal Medicine and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, he was launching a new research protocol. “We might be able to start collecting and generating data from COVID-19 infected kidney cells as soon as tomorrow, so we can help patients with kidney diseases and those with COVID-19 induced kidney damage. The sooner we can start, the sooner we can find answers.”

Transposable elements play an important role in genetic expression and evolution

04/14/2020

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 and commonly thought of as “useless junk,” with a minimal role, if any at all, in the activity of a cell. A new study by Adam Diehl, Ningxin Ouyang, and Alan Boyle, University of Michigan Medical School and members of the U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine, shows that transposable elements play an important role in regulating genetic expression with implications to advance the understanding of genetic evolution.

Seeing is believing: The cutting edge of watching single molecules inside human cells

02/18/2020

The cell is a complex network of interacting components, or molecules, each of them with its own characteristics and all of them together functioning as a living system. Each of the molecular processes and interactions in the cell bears the risk of becoming dysfunctional, resulting in disease. Biomedical research into processes that power the cell lays the foundation for major therapeutic breakthroughs. However, the minuscule length scales and high speeds at which these intracellular processes take place make it very challenging to observe them directly within a single cell.

Nils Walter’s team at the University of Michigan, Chemistry Department and Center for RNA Biomedicine, has reviewed the latest research on using high-resolution, single molecule fluorescence microscopy tools to study the interactions between molecules in live human cells in real time. The review covers research reported in 85 publications over the last 5 years, aiming to consolidate the developments and disseminate the techniques that can follow multiple molecules at once (“multiplexing”). These techniques are relatively easy to implement, and are becoming increasingly available and affordable.

Red RNA molecules are docking onto green processing bodies containing RNA degrading enzymes.

Publication in Nature Neuroscience: Disease-causing Repeats Help Human Neurons Function

02/17/2020

Before and after treatment

Over half of our genomes are made of repeating elements within DNA. In rare cases, these repeats can become unstable and grow in size. These repeat “expansions” cause neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Dementia as well as learning disorders and autism in Fragile X syndrome. Research to date has focused on how these expanded repeats cause disease, but little attention has been given to the repeats themselves and whether they might have normal functions in genes.

By focusing on the biology of healthy nerve cells, a team from the University of Michigan Department of Neurology found that repeats in the gene that causes Fragile X Syndrome normally regulate how and when proteins are made in neurons. This process may be important for learning and memory in these nerve cells and potentially in people. “The repeats function like a switch, slowing down protein production and then quickly turning things back on,” explains Peter Todd, MD., Ph.D., and Principal Investigator of this research.

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