Wang Lab
Principal Investigator: Dong Wang
Institution: University of California San Diego (La Jolla, CA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary/Abstract All life forms on Earth use the same set of natural genetic alphabets: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), thymine (T) (and uracil (U)) as the building blocks for storage and retrieval of their genetic information. Recently, a major breakthrough was made in developing the first semi-synthetic organism that is able to store and retrieve genetic information containing an unnatural base pair (UBP) in vivo. However, the molecular basis of transcription processing of UBPs is poorly understood. An important and long-standing question remains unanswered: How are these UBPs recognized by cellular transcription machinery? A lack of clear answers to this important question represents a major knowledge gap in the field. The long-term goal of this project is to tackle this important question. We hypothesize the transcription recognition of UBPs is governed by two layers of specific interactions: specific interactions between the unnatural nucleic acid template and substrates as well as their interplays with the active site of RNA polymerase. We will perform kinetic studies and compare the transcription processing of three classes of representative UBPs by different…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01GM148476-04: Recognition of Synthetic Unnatural Base Pairs by RNA Polymerase (2026)
- 5R01GM102362-13: Molecular Mechanisms for DNA Damage Processing by Transcription Machinery (2025)
- 5R01GM148476-03: Recognition of Synthetic Unnatural Base Pairs by RNA Polymerase (2025)
- 5R01GM102362-12: Molecular Mechanisms for DNA Damage Processing by Transcription Machinery (2024)
- 5R01GM148476-02: Recognition of Synthetic Unnatural Base Pairs by RNA Polymerase (2024)
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