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Imaging the life and death of mRNAs in single cells
Biography:
Jeffrey Chao obtained his PhD from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA where he worked with James Williamson on the structure and function of RNA-protein complexes. His postdoctoral studies with Robert Singer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY focused on understanding RNA localization and developing fluorescent microscopy techniques for imaging single mRNAs. In 2013, he established his own group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. His group combines biochemistry, structural biology and single-molecule imaging to investigate the mechanisms that control post-transcriptional regulation in the cytoplasm.
Abstract:
After transcription, an mRNA's fate is determined by an orchestrated series of events (processing, export, localization, translation and degradation) that is regulated both temporally and spatially within the cell. In order to more completely understand these processes and how they are coupled, it is necessary to be able to observe these events as they occur on single molecules of mRNA in real-time in living cells. To expand the scope of questions that can be addressed by RNA imaging, we develop multi-color fluorescent microscopy methodologies that allow that status of a single mRNA molecules (e.g. translation or degradation) to be directly visualized and quantified. We have used these techniques to characterize the spatial and temporal regulation of translation and mRNA decay during stress and the coupling between translation and mRNA decay.