Kendall Condon Rose Hills
Specific Active Site Inhibition of Members ofthe DEAD-Box Protein Family
DEAD-box proteins are vital to the central dogma of biology. They are involved in all aspects of RNA biology including ribosome biogenesis, mRNA export, RNA-protein complex remodeling and much more. Since DEAD-box proteins have been implicated in pathways of viral infections, like HIV, and many types of cancers, they are critical to human health. The two most formidable hurdles in researching this family are their highly similar active sites and that most are essential for life. This makes studying individual DEAD-box proteins difficult, so many of their functions remain unclear. My project will focus on designing chemical inhibitors for a single DEAD-box protein in order to develop methods for further investigating the entire DEAD-box family. This work will reveal the potential of chemical inhibition of DEAD-box proteins for treating disease and shed light on the biological functions of specific DEAD-box proteins.
Message To Sponsor
I am extremely grateful to the Rose Hills Foundation for supporting me during this summer of fulltime research. I have always been interested in research, but this is the first time I will have the skills and ability to work on an awesome project for the summer. During the semester, I can almost always be found in the laboratory so I am overwhelmingly excited to be able to spend my time there. Through this experience, I hope to expand my laboratory skills and my ability to think like a scientist with the excellent mentorship of the Doudna laboratory.