Notice Board

The Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute presents Dr. Kristian Baker from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, USA. Her talk is titled "RNA Quality Control - Looking for Nonsense." The ARRTI Speaker Series is open to the public and was established to bring leading researchers to the University of Lethbridge for lectures on a broad range of topics relating to RNA research. All are welcome! Coffee and snacks will be provided.

Abstract:

Work in the Baker lab is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the recognition and rapid degradation of nonsense codon-containing mRNA in eukaryotes by the conserved, nonsense-mediate mRNA decay (NMD) pathway. We couple classical genetics and biochemistry with transcriptome-wide and proteomic approaches to elucidate how the cell detects these aberrant mRNAs and how the NMD machinery functions to rapidly clear them from the cell. Exciting new findings suggest that the NMD machinery directly interacts with prematurely terminating ribosomes and that this interaction is critical for targeting the mRNA to accelerated decay.

About Dr. Baker:

Dr. Kristian Baker received her BSc (Hons) and MSc in Chemistry/Biochemistry from the Univ of Regina working on the regulation of genes involved in pyrimidine metabolism in bacteria. She completed her PhD in Genetics at UBC in 2002 working on the interplay between mRNA translation and decay in prokaryotes with George Mackie. Dr. Baker then went on to do post-doctoral training as a Howard Hughes Research Fellow in the lab of Roy Parker at the Univ. of Arizona in Tucson where she worked on nucleo-cytoplasmic mRNA transport, mRNA degradation and RNA quality control in budding yeast. In her own lab at CWRU, Dr. Baker is interested in the molecular mechanisms of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay and the regulation and function of lncRNAs in yeast.