For the next speaker in our series, we welcome Dr. Shu-Bing Qian. He is the James Jamison Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences here at Cornell. He is also applying for field membership with the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering.
Make Sense of Translational Noise
ABSTRACT: A central tenet of biology is the accurate flow of genetic information from nucleic acids to proteins. Biological noises, however, are often overlooked. Using newly developed high-resolution ribosome profiling, we found that the initiating ribosome undergoes a surprising slippage at the start codon, resulting in promiscuous translation. We termed this phenomenon as start codon-associated ribosome frameshifting (SCARF). Both the molecular mechanism and physiological significance of SCARF will be discussed.
BIO: Dr. Qian received his PhD from Shanghai Jiao-tong University. He is currently the James Jamison Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. He has >20 years of research experience in translational regulation of gene expression. Dr. Qian’s research has transformed our understanding of nutrient stress response pathways in mRNA translation and protein homeostasis. He pioneered the development of profiling initiating ribosomes (GTI-seq), which revealed an unprecedented view of alternative translation in mammalian cells. More recently, Dr. Qian established an mRNA-based massively paralleled reporter assay to elucidate sequence elements controlling start codon selection.
