The role of 3' UTR variation in the molecular pathogenesis of motor neuron disease

Our main award is based on the generation and use of cross-linking and immunoprecipitation (CLIP) data to assess the role of 3' UTR variation in the molecular pathogenesis of motor neuron disease. Ultraviolet CLIP is commonly used to profile endogenous interactions between protein and RNA interactions. There is no unified CLIP data resource and this hampers integrative analysis. There are 27 variants of the method already in existence which have produced thousands of data sets for several hundred RNA-binding proteins in diverse species, from bacteria to human. 

We will establish a public repository of all public CLIP data produced in different cell types, tissues and species. This resource will empower lab biologists to explore processed CLIP data and assess if variations between different CLIP protocols produced in different laboratories influence reproducibility, technical artefacts and other measures of data quality. A unified platform will provide consistently comparable data to bioinformaticians for integrative meta-analyses of all available data. 

The public repository will enhance the capacity to advance our understanding of epitranscriptomics and the regulatory mechanisms of protein-RNA complexes.