New technique illuminates the complexity of RNA interactome in humans and microbes

Molecular Cell has published a paper co-authored by Branco Weiss fellow Yue Wan that explains a new technique named Sequencing of Psoralen Linked And Selected Hybrids (SPLASH), that identifies pair-wise RNA interaction partners in an unbiased and genome-wide manner in vivo.

The team used this method to provide the first RNA interactome map of human and yeast cells, and observed that RNA interaction clusters are highly dynamic and can be remodeled in different cellular states, including stem cell and differentiated states. This work paves the way for deepening the understanding of how RNA organization impacts biology.

Using this newly developed technique, the researchers aim to study the transcriptomes of pathogens to understand how intramolecular and intermolecular interactions in these genomes enable the pathogen to infect human cells. This effort in understanding microbial pathogenicity will hopefully contribute to new anti-microbials/anti-virals or vaccines against these pathogens.

Read the paper