SGS: Craig Mello - RNAi: A Molecular Spark in an Information Inferno
Max Planck Special Guest Lecture Series
- Datum: 05.06.2024
- Uhrzeit: 11:00 - 12:00
- Vortragender: Craig Mello
- UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, USA
- Ort: MPI-IE
- Raum: Lecture Hall
- Gastgeber: Ibrahim Cissé
The American biologist and professor of molecular medicine at the UMass Chan Medical School, Craig Mello, will give a seminar in the lecture hall of the MPI. Craig was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2006 for the discovery of RNA interference and research on the models of how genes get silenced by double-stranded RNA.
Current research uses the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism in which to study the role of PIWI Argonaute (AGO) and other AGO pathways. Recently we have shown that worm PIWI AGOs use their piRNA cofactors to constantly scan the germline for foreign mRNA sequences. There are tens of thousands of distinct piRNA species expressed in the germline, and PIWI AGOs can target while allowing a few mismatches between the piRNA guide and the mRNA target sequence. Thus, given their large numbers and sequence diversity, dozens of piRNAs will recognize and base-pair partially to any foreign mRNA sequences expressed in the germline.
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