Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Daniel Liu

Discovering Novel Programmed Ribosomal Frameshift Motifs

This summer, I will study programmed ribosomal frameshifting, a process in which ribosomes shift reading frames during translation to produce alternative protein products from the same RNA sequence. We will use a computational package we designed to search genomic and transcriptomic sequences for novel frameshift motifs by combining signals such as slippery sequences, RNA structure, and evolutionary conservation. The follow-up to this is experimental validation with reporter screens and assaying frameshift efficiency. The goal is to identify candidate frameshifting events that may reveal new layers of gene regulation and expand our understanding of how organisms use translational recoding.

Message To Sponsor

Thank you for supporting this summer research opportunity. Your generosity gives me the chance to deepen my experience in computational biology while pursuing a question that genuinely excites me: how hidden regulatory signals in RNA can shape gene expression. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow as a researcher, contribute to a meaningful project, and take another step toward my long-term goal of pursuing biological research.