News

Latest News

Proudfoot lab celebrates internationalism as Russian postdoc awarded European Commission grant

Group Leader Nick Proudfoot continues to celebrate the internationalism of his lab following the award of a European Commission grant to Russian born postdoc Inna Zukher in January 2017.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions individual fellowship award, part of the EU Horizon 2020 programme, will provide 2 years’ funding for Inna’s research project at the Dunn School, titled: “Dissecting the mechanism of mammalian gene transcription termination using CRISPR-cas9 mediated transcriptional pausing.”

Commenting on the award Professor Proudfoot said: “In the era of Brexit and Trump it is particularly notable that Inna is a Russian scientist now with her own EU fellowship working at the Dunn School.”

Inna Zukher, 27, a postdoc in the Proudfoot group since May 2016 studied her doctorate at the Institute of Gene Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions individual fellowships are awarded to researchers from anywhere in the world considered to have the highest potential to make a game-changing impact to society and the economy.

Find out more:

    • Project outline:

      Proteins in the cell are made according to the RNA template, synthesised by RNA polymerase according to the DNA template. The RNA template is suitable for protein synthesis only if RNA polymerase starts and stops transcription at very specific points.

      While DNA of the “simpler” organisms, such as bacteria, contains well-defined nucleotide sequence signals, recognised by polymerase as start and stop signs, principles of human DNA “punctuation” are less clear.

      One of the proposed stop mechanisms in human genes depends on polymerase slowdown. I will directly test, if such a slowdown can work as a stop trigger. I will employ the dCas9 DNA-binding protein, which binds to a specific nucleotide sequence on DNA. I will position it on the polymerase way and test, if this obstacle causes a polymerase slowdown and stop. I will study if such an engineered stop is similar to the native pause-induced mechanism and if it results in the production of authentic RNA, suitable for protein synthesis