Nuclear RNA processing and surveillance

The aim of David’s group is to understand the nuclear pathways that process newly transcribed RNAs and assemble the RNA-protein complexes. They are also interested in the mechanisms that regulate these pathways and the surveillance activities that monitor their fidelity. To allow mechanistic insights, the group has developed techniques for transcriptome-wide analyses of RNA-protein interactions (CRAC) and RNA-RNA interactions (CLASH). These techniques are currently being used to define the in vivo targets of nuclear surveillance systems, determine how the many non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are distinguished from messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and identify direct mRNA targets for ncRNAs including microRNAs, long-ncRNAs and small nucleolar RNAs.