Searching for novel catalytic rnas and splicing systems in modern genomes

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Project objective

Research objectives and content This project aims to identify novel active RNAs among the products encoded in contemporary genomes. By active RNA, I mean both RNAs that catalyse reactions on their own or with the help of cofactors, and RNAs with catalytic activity that depends on the presence of proteins such as those involved in protein-assisted splicing systems. Except for RNase P, all currently known catalytic RNAs get involved into auto-circularization processes which facilitate their survival, replication and/or integration into other DNA or RNA molecules: selection for self-circularization should constitute a general route for recovering molecules that catalyze transesterification. I have set up an in vitro selection protocol devised to isolate among a genome the sequences encoding for molecules able to self-circularize. The same procedure could also be carried out sing cellular extracts, which might allow to detect the products of any reconstitutable splicing system. Training content (objective, benefit and expected impact) I will join Dr Smith's laboratory to learn how to prepare and manipulate splicing competent extracts. My plans are to use this stategy to investigate the genomes of a number of bacterial and archaebacterial species living in extreme environments, as well as the genomes of primitive eucaryotes such as diplomonadida which infect mammalian cells. Links with industry / industrial relevance (22)

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• University of Cambridge · CambridgeCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
• Not availableCity levelFrance

Links

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