FURI | Needs Review, 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.