Reflections on 20 years of RNA science
- Department of Chemistry, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA
- Corresponding author: afeig{at}chem.wayne.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
I joined the RNA Society in 1995 as I started my post-doctoral fellowship in Olke Uhlenbeck's Laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder. With the Cech, Uhlenbeck, and Pardi Labs all studying them, catalytic RNAs were a central topic of conversations—in the lunchrooms, in the hallways, at RNA Club, and of course in the pages of RNA. At the time, Olke and I together with others in the lab were developing methods to find and analyze the metal ion binding sites within the hammerhead and understand whether they were structural or functional in nature. The ribozyme and catalytic RNA sessions at the RNA Society Meeting were among the best-attended and featured heated debates and intense questioning from Dan Herschlag among others about the experimental design and what could really be interpreted from the kinetic analyses. That year Steve Scaringe founded a company called Dharmacon to sell synthetic RNAs. The …
