We’re interested in better understanding the structure, regulation and function of RNA processing complexes that are both essential for life and that also have links to neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative disease.
We want to understand, how do disease-causing mutations impact the cellular function of these proteins? Do they cause a loss or a gain of function that leads to disease. We use interdisciplinary approaches including structural biology, biochemistry and cell-based approaches to try to understand the impact of mutations on proteins and how these mutations impact their function.
To understand what goes wrong in disease, we need to better understand the basic functions and regulation of these proteins in cells. In health cells, how are these proteins regulated to make sure they only target their RNA substrates at the right time, place, and rate? What happens when to those RNAs when they aren’t processed? These questions require understanding how a protein behaves in a test tube (in vitro), and requires an understanding of what changes on the cellular level and how finally, what that’s like in the context of different tissues.
The Hayne Lab 