Dr. Jeff Mugridge
University of Deleware
Department of Chemistry/Biochemistry
Friday, November 7, 2025
12:00 Noon
Room 120 – Meyerhoff Chemistry Building
Host: Dr. Aaron Smith
“Metals, mechanisms, and messages: how metalloenzymes do chemistry on RNA to control gene expression”
Cellular RNA molecules across all domains of life are decorated with chemical modifications that tune RNA structure, function, and stability. These modifications are essential for precise post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, and defects in RNA modification pathways are increasingly linked to human diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative disorders. RNA-modifying ‘writer’ and ‘eraser’ enzymes use diverse mechanisms to install or remove modifications on specific nucleobases in mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA. In this talk, I will highlight our lab’s recent biochemical and structural work that uncovers new mechanisms by which RNA-modifying metalloenzymes carry out selective chemistry on RNA, showing how metal cofactors direct radical-mediated chemistry to modify RNA and shape the epitranscriptome.