Peter Moore, PhD

By protein standards, our understanding of RNA structure and function is primitive because it was technically difficult to determine RNA structures for many years. Consequently, even though the technical problems have been overcome, there are lots of RNAs—many of them recently discovered—for which we do not have structures, and hence cannot fully explain their functional properties. The Moore group studies RNA structure/function using NMR and X-ray crystallography as well as molecular biological techniques. The structures being investigated today include: 1) those that form when box H/ACA snoRNAs interact with the rRNA sequences they target for pseudouridylation; and 2) the ribosomal proteins/mRNA complexes responsible for the autogenous regulation of ribosomal protein synthesis. We are also trying to identify the sources of the species specificity shown by many of the antibiotics that inhibit ribosome activity by binding to highly conserved rRNA sequences, and to determine the three-dimensional structure of the eukaryotic ribosome.