| My research focuses on the important roles that RNA molecules and RNA-protein interactions play in gene expression and regulation. I primarily use the structural biology technique of X-ray crystallography to study the molecular details of protein-protein and protein-RNA recognition. In addition, I use complementary biophysical techniques to address function in vitro. I study two separate projects that both aim to understand how protein synthesis is regulated. The first project is to determine the molecular mechanism of how the translational apparatus performs errors and reads non-canonical codons by mRNA frameshifts. This phenomenon is also used by clever retroviruses, like HIV-1, to maximize protein products from single genes. Another project is to understand the molecular basis of how localized translation occurs by the specific recognition and transportation of diverse, translationally repressed mRNAs to distinct subcellular locations within the cell.
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