UC Irvine

RNA is a highly regulatory biomolecule within the cell. RNA has been identified in many biological functions that involve growth and development, and dysregulation of RNA has been demonstrated to be critical in the onset of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Toward the goal of elucidating novel RNA functions chemical methods have been developed. These include chemical probing of RNA structures and metabolic incorporation of modified nucleosides into nascent transcripts. These approaches add precision to current methods through subcellular profiling, enzyme-substrate pairs for cell-type specific labeling, multifunctional nucleosides for profiling RNA-protein interactions, and multicomponent labeling for RNA lifetimes with determination of sites of incorporation. Combining these chemical techniques with modern sequencing methods offers a holistic view of RNA biology in real time. Here, is presented the work toward advancing chemical methods for studying RNA biology.