Medical School
Twin Cities
The objective of this project is to identify the RNAs that interact with proteins that regulate intracellular iron concentration. Although iron is essential for normal cellular function, it can be extremely toxic if the intracellular concentration is not tightly controlled. There are indications that the homeostatic mechanisms could be altered under pathological conditions such as cancer. The key RNA-protein interactions that mediate the regulation are being identified within both normal cells and various cancer cell lines to find differences that could ultimately be targeted with novel therapeutics. The experimental approach involves generating libraries of interacting RNAs for next-generation sequencing (MiSeq), which is being performed at the University of Minnesota Genomics Center. MSI resources, especially Galaxy software, are used for annotation and analysis of the sequence data.