The correct functioning of cells relies heavily on the ability to finely control gene expression, a complex process by which the information contained in DNA is copied into RNA to eventually give rise to all the proteins and most of the regulatory molecules in the cell.
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IITJul 2 2024 If DNA can be imagined as a dense technical manual, gene expression is the method by which the cell extracts useful information from it.
The research paper, published in Nature Communications, was coordinated by Marco De Vivo, Principal Investigator of the Molecular Modeling & Drug Discovery Lab and Associate Director for Computation at IIT in Genoa, and by Marco Marcia, Group Leader at EMBL Grenoble.
Studying the RNA splicing process is very complex due to the chemical reactions and the molecular actors involved, such as RNA, proteins, ions, and water molecules. Thanks to modern molecular simulation techniques, we have acquired a detailed understanding of what happens, and how to intervene to modulate splicing. Our study has already enabled us to synthesize new drug-like molecules capable of modulating splicing in a new, specific, and highly effective way.
Indeed, IIT and EMBL researchers, with the support of EMBLEM – EMBL's technology and knowledge transfer branch – and IIT's patent office, have recently also deposited a patent that describes novel chemical compounds acting as splicing modulators. In the future, by further improving these compounds, it may become possible to regulate the production of specific proteins linked to defective or mutated genes.
Gene Expression Cell DNA Drugs Genetic Laboratory Molecular Biology Research RNA Small Molecules Splicing Structural Biology
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