How to find needle in a haystack? (New types of RNA modifications)

Date

Apr 24, 2018

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Hana Macicková Cahová

Affiliation

Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS, Prague, Czech Republic

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie

Host

DPSX seminar - Pavel Tomancak

Description

Nowadays, there are more than 100 RNA modifications known in eubacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. The majority of chemical RNA modifications has been discovered in highly concentrated RNA such as rRNA and tRNA. Nevertheless, the number of modifications mapped in mRNA, lncRNA or sRNA (in prokaryotes) is expanding. Beside the classical methylations of nucleobase and ribose moieties, the more exotic RNA modification such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) has been identified as a new cap in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The exact role of NAD has not been elucidated yet and either we fail in understanding of the exact roles of classical methylations. In our group, we use two approaches for searching for new RNA modifications and for understanding their roles. As first, we realize that if there are more RNA modifications still hidden, there might have been already known some enzymes responsible for their synthesis, biodegradation or reading and only the real substrate - RNA has not been discovered yet. We identified one group of enzymes with potential to accept RNA as substrate and we developed LC/MS technique for the tracking of new types of RNA modifications. In our second project, we concentrate on viruses, as they are excellent model systems for their intrinsic simple organization and for their amplification in infected cells. The sensitive methods for the detection and analysis of low-abundant RNA species were developed only very recently and they have never been used for the detection of modifications in viral coding or non-coding RNAs. We employ methods of LC/MS and chemical biology in combination with next-generation sequencing to understand chemical structure of genomic viral RNA and viral encoded RNA. The simplicity of their genomes and well-described structure and machinery of various viruses make them a perfect model system for studying the role of classical methylations as well as new RNA conjugates such as NAD-RNA.

Last modified: Apr 25, 2018, 9:45:50 AM