With this new award, the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program supports the work of Professor Kazunori Koide, of the Chemistry Department at the University of Pittsburgh. This research will involve investigations of the use of fluorescent sensors to image RNA. The sensors will be covalently linked to a quencher, which inhibits fluorescence. Upon gene expression, an RNA, which binds to the quencher, will be generated. This quencher binding will allow fluorescence, thus providing an in vivo method of determining which genes are being expressed in a living cell.
The techniques to be developed in this project, which have the potential of examining gene activity in real time, are expected to have broad and deep impacts at the interface of chemistry and biology. Students involved in this research program will be trained in synthetic, mechanistic and analytical chemistry, as well as molecular, structural, and cell biology. This interdisciplinary program will produce uniquely trained scientists capable of solving the complex problems of modern chemical biology.
