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Colloquium Karin Musier-Forsyth (The Ohio State University) - Structural Insights Into Retroviral RNA Genomes

Karin Musier-Forsyth
February 23, 2016
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
1080 Physics Research Building - Smith Seminar Room - Smith Seminar Room - reception at 3:45pm in the Atrium

The 5’ untranslated region (5’-UTR) is a highly conserved region of retroviral RNA genomes responsible for regulating many steps of the retroviral lifecycle including viral RNA dimerization, packaging, initiation of reverse transcription, transcriptional regulation, and splicing. A complete understanding of the mechanisms controlling retroviral replication requires structural characterization of this RNA. Unfortunately, its large size and conformational flexibility renders common methods of solving structures, such as X-ray crystallography and NMR exceedingly difficult. Here, we use a solution technique, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), coupled with computational molecular modeling and structure probing, to characterize RNAs (100-350 nucleotides in length) derived from the 5’-UTR of HIV-1 and other retroviruses. Similarities and differences in their packaging signals, the presence of tRNA structural mimicry, conformational switches upon dimerization and primer annealing, and length-dependent changes in global conformation will all be discussed.