Welcome to Chow Lab Research Exploring the RNA World, One Modification at a Time
"All for One and One for All "
Our Approach
Project 1 -Synthesis of modified nucleosides, their incorporation into model systems, biophysical studies such as UV melting, NMR, and CD spectroscopy, and biological assays
Project 2 -Stability studies of lyposome and the modified antisense oligonucleotides to target Non-Hodgekin's lymphoma cells.
Project Showcase
Name: Santosh K. Mahto
e-mail: smahto@chem.wayne.edu
Webpage:
phone: 3135773090
Various modified nucleosides are found in the ribosomal RNAs. These modified nucleosides are found at or near the functional sites of the ribosome. The decoding region (helix 44) is a very important functional region of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) that is involved in translational accuracy and binding to messenger RNA (mRNA), transfer RNAs (tRNAs), the large subunit rRNA, and some of the known antibiotics. There are three conserved modified nucleosides in the bacterial decoding site of 16S rRNA, namely 5-methylcytidine (m5C), 3-methyluridine (m3U) and N4, 2'-O-dimethylcytidine (m4Cm). The fact that these modified nucleosides are present in the decoding region implies that they might have important functions; however, the role of these nucleotides is still not understood.
My project is to find out the importance of the modifications of the decoding region. Synthesis of modified nucleosides, their incorporation into model systems, biophysical studies such as UV melting, NMR, and CD spectroscopy, and biological assays are employed to determine the importance of the modified nucleosides, which may eventually lead to the development of novel antiinfectives. Supported by NIH AI 061192.
Figure 1: This scheme shows the route to generate the site-specifically modified decoding region model system.
