ALAIN LAEDERACH’S LAB GETS NIH GRANT RENEWED

Congratulations to Alain Laederach’s lab for renewing their NIH grant titled “Structural and functional consequences of disease SNP’s on the transcriptome.” The lab will continue to study riboSNitches and will also be able to delve deeper into RNA structure/function relationships in translationally regulated 5’UTRs. In addition, the lab has secured two additional collaborative proposals, one with Christine Heitsch (Math Department, Georgia Tech) titled “Multimodal RNA structural motifs in Alphavirus genomes:Discovery and Validations,” and another with Nils Walter (Chemistry Department, University of Michigan) titled “Timing and coordination of the conformational rearrangements mediating splicing.” In both of these collaborative projects the lab will actively participate in both the experimental and computational aims. In fact for the Georgia Tech project, which is funded through the Math Directorate joint NSF/NIH program, the Laederach lab’s role is primarily experimental. Neighboring labs in GSB need not worry, however, as Alain’s role remains completely “dry.”