FURI | Summer 2022

RNA’s Higher Order Structure and Its Effect on Stability and Function for Medical Application

Research in this study investigates whether the structural motif Degradation Tuning Ribonucleic Acid (dt-RNA) enhances the function of aptamers for COVID-19 testing kits and increases the stability of mi-RNA. This research shows that aptamers attached to dt-RNA retain function, and mi-RNAs that are connected show an increase in stability. This makes dt-RNA an attractive motif for studying in the future other heterogeneous structures that require stability for function such as peg-RNA which increases prime editing efficiency with RNA stability. The future research plan is to use machine learning (ML) to develop a robust degradation tuning RNA for stability-dependent RNAs.