<h3>Title</h3>
<h3>Breaking riboswitch speed limits by site specific mutation and un-natural base pair incorporation</h3>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Abstract</span> :</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Riboswitch-based biosensing tools like reporters, aptazymes, and RNA-based fluorescent (RBF) biosensors have wide applications in cell biology, biotechnology and synthetic biology. A crucial aspect of the applications of these biosensing tools is their turn-on kinetics to monitor sensitive and dynamic biological processes. While considerable effort has been made toward developing new biosensing tools for interesting ligands, the optimization of their activation rate is often neglected. A common step involved in the activation of any riboswitch-based tools is the folding of the riboswitches in the presence of a particular analyte. Hence, optimizing the riboswitch’s folding speed will help to improve any riboswitch-based tool’s performance. In this context, by using a riboswitch-based fluorescent biosensor, we have come up with two different approaches to how a riboswitch’s folding rate can be enhanced by base-pair mutagenesis. The study here has shown that a site-specific single base-pair mutation by transposing the bases or swapping the pyrimidine-purine bases, or incorporating an unnatural hydrophobic base pair can significantly ameliorate a riboswitch-based biosensor’s activation rate. The strategies we have developed can be utilized to improve the performance of other riboswitch-based devices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> In the last part of my talk, I will present my future research plans, which will exploit organic synthesis, nucleic acid chemistry, and synthetic biology approaches. Specifically, I will discuss how I plan to develop an RNA-based screening platform and design novel RNA targeting ligands in an effort to explore novel antibacterial RNA drug targets. My research plan will also include designing Xeno-nucleic acid enzymes for efficient gene silencing.</p>