Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Ph.D., Oregon State, 1997
Phone: (405) 271-8300
Fax: (405) 271-3092
975 N.E. 10th, BRC468
Oklahoma City, OK 73104
Mooers Mooers Lab Members
Crystallography & Molecular Graphics Software Links Easy PyMOL YouTube Videos
Easy PyMOL with horizontal scripts, Github stie
Small Angle Scattering Links
Oklahoma COBRE in Structural Biology
COBRE-sponsored Symposium on Structural Biology, OU-Norman, Tuesday June 14, 2016. Register in mid-April.
Stephenson Cancer Center at OU
OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research
OUHSC Macromolecular Crystallography Lab
Oklahoma Structural Biology Nexus
Uridine (U) insertion/deletion editing in trypanosomes is an extensive post-transcriptional process that corrects the coding sequence of most mitochondrial mRNAs. This editing is required for the subsequent expression of several mitochondrial proteins. The number of Us that are inserted far exceeds that number that are deleted; there is a net increase in the number of codons after editing. An enzyme cascade does the editing in the mitochondrion. The editing reactions are directed by a number of different guide RNAs. Each guide RNA has the sequence complement of a fragment of the final edited mRNA sequence. Consequently, much of the genetic information for the final RNA transcript comes from both its corresponding gene and the genes for the set of guide RNAs that direct its editing. In other words, the genetic information flows from DNA to RNA along multiple parallel pathways. This is an interesting variation of the central paradigm of molecular biology that information flows along one pathway from DNA→RNA→protein. The evolutionary basis for such a complex and expensive system of information flow is still unclear.
Our goal is to obtain a rigorous description of the structural biology of this type of RNA editing to improve our understanding of its evolutionary basis, clarify the relationship between this type of RNA editing and other types of RNA editing, and to provide a structural basis of the design of better drugs to fight infections with trypanosomes which threaten 600 million people worldwide.
Selected Publications (*corresponding author, pdb codes from structures determined in my lab or by me): [My Google Scholar Page] [Search Pubmed]