Jen Heemstra, PhD, will present this year’s Catherine H. Bone Lecture, “Tracking the Edits that Rewrite the RNA Code,” at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15, in the Henry Student Center, 2nd Floor, Jean and Paul Adams Commons, 84 W. South Street, Wilkes-Barre. The lecture is free and open to the public.
RNA undergoes extensive chemical modification in cells, resulting in changes to protein expression or even the sequences of the proteins generated. Adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing is one of the most widespread and impactful of these modifications and is catalyzed by adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs). Resulting inosines base pair with cytosine, essentially re-coding adenosine sites to guanine. Editing is essential for several processes, including embryogenesis, neurological function and innate cellular immunity. Dysfunctional editing is also linked to autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders and several types of cancer. Despite this importance, numerous challenges remain for studying A-to-I editing, and our overall understanding of the locations and frequency of inosine sites remains limited. To address this challenge, we have repurposed EndoV from an RNA-cleaving enzyme into an RNA-binding protein and demonstrated its use for mapping of A-to-I editing sites and global profiling of RNA inosine content in cells and tissue samples.
Heemstra received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, in 2000. At Irvine, she performed undergraduate research investigating the folding of synthetic beta-sheet mimics, which instilled in her a love of supramolecular chemistry. She then moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she completed her doctorate in 2005, studying the reactivity of pyridine-functionalized phenylene ethynylene cavitands.
After a brief time in industry as a medicinal chemist, Heemstra moved to Harvard University to pursue postdoctoral research exploring mechanisms for templated nucleic acid synthesis. She began her independent career in 2010 and is currently the Charles Allen Thomas Professor and Chair in the Department of Chemistry at Washington University in St Louis. Research in the Heemstra lab is focused on harnessing the molecular recognition and self-assembly properties of nucleic acids and proteins for applications in biosensing and bioimaging. An avid science communicator and mentor, Heemstra has received numerous awards for her teaching, research and leadership, including the Cottrell Scholar Award and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Catherine H. Bone Lecture Series in chemistry is hosted by the Wilkes University Chemistry Department and is made possible by the endowments left by Catherine H. Bone, who taught chemistry at Wilkes from 1946-1965.
For more information, visit wilkes.edu/bonelecture.