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Getting Back to Basics with DNA

Justin Peters

Each human cell is crammed with 2 meters of DNA, meaning that there is enough of the thread-like DNA in a single human body to reach to the moon and back more than 100 times. The genetic recipes for the microscopic machines of life are all encoded in DNA, and genetic engineering has made DNA familiar to many researchers and students. Surprisingly, although the double-helical structure of DNA has been known for 55 years, the origins of the distinct physical properties of the DNA molecule remain unknown. Justin Peters, a recent graduate of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, is getting back to basics with the DNA molecule by probing its essential features.

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Searching Vast Random Libraries of Small RNAs for New Inhibitors

Susan Wurster

Arriving at Mayo Graduate School in 2004 from her undergraduate engineering background at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, Susan Wurster was curious about molecular biology projects that linked engineering principles and drug discovery. In the Maher lab she initiated a study involving the creation and characterization of RNA "aptamers," small folded and unnatural RNA molecules whose shapes allow them to stick tightly to specific molecular targets in cells.

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Linking Metabolic Defects and Cancer

Emily Smith

After graduating from Saint Peters College in New Jersey, Emily Smith entered Mayo Graduate School in 2002 with an interest in cellular metabolism. She was a perfect fit to fill a pioneering role in a new project in the Maher lab. Unlike other nucleic acids work in the lab, Emily wished to understand the peculiar role of cell metabolism in the origin of human tumors called pheochromocytomas (PHEO) and paragangliomas (PGL). As a Mayo PGL patient, Maher had become intrigued in the unusual genetic inheritance pattern of such tumors. There was an obvious need for a new biochemical perspective with model organisms, and Emily Smith accepted the challenge. PGL and PHEO tumors run in families.

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Building Transcription Factors from RNA

John-paul Bida

With training in mathematics and computer science from Johns Hopkins University, John-paul Bida entered Mayo Graduate School in 2006 as an unlikely candidate for a thesis project involving yeast and artificial transcription factors. His quantitative thinking and engineering aptitude made the transition fast and fascinating. John-paul’s project involves a bold proposition: RNA molecules can be created to control the transcription of target genes. With the discovery that some natural small RNAs regulate the stability and translation of messenger RNAs, John-paul wondered if a different class of artificial RNAs could be engineered to turn genes off or on at the DNA level by a totally different mechanism.

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