Congratulations to Dr. Brenda Bass our 2026 Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence recipient. Dr. Bass has transformed our understanding of the relationship between RNA biochemistry and human disease, and has also consistently excelled in training and service. attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff...

Biochemist Brenda Bass wins Rosenblatt Prize - @theU

Distinguished professor helped reveal the inner workings of RNA, the molecule that carries genetic instruction for building proteins.

attheu.utah.edu

A huge congratulations to Brenda Bass @bbass.bsky.social for her Lifetime Achievement Award from the RNA Society @rnasociety.bsky.social! She is being recognized for her "groundbreaking discovery of A-to-I editing and outstanding contributions to this field."

So, so, honored by this award—it is daunting to know that my heroes have won this award! Thanks to my heroes and mentors, and my trainees, who are everything!!!!

U of Utah Dept of Biochemistry@uofubiochem.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A huge congratulations to Brenda Bass @bbass.bsky.social for her Lifetime Achievement Award from the RNA Society @rnasociety.bsky.social! She is being recognized for her "groundbreaking discovery of A-to-I editing and outstanding contributions to this field."

Colliding ribosomes are potent signals of cellular stress. But do cells use ‘programmed’ ribosome collisions to regulate gene expression? I’m excited to present a new story from my lab led by Frederick Rehfeld(@fred-rehfeld.bsky.social) which revealed that the answer is YES! Read on to find out how👇

Oxidative stress sensing by the translation elongation machinery promotes production of detoxifying selenoproteins

Selenocysteine, incorporated into polypeptides at recoded termination codons, plays an essential role in redox biology. Using GPX1 and GPX4, selenoenzymes that mitigate oxidative stress, as reporters,...

biorxiv.org

We have an opening for a Postdoctoral Fellow to join us in exploring fundamental questions at the interface of protein synthesis defects and stress-responsive signaling pathways. utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/187... #RNAsky

I am delighted to share that I have started my lab in the Dept. of Biochemistry @uofubiochem.bsky.social at the University of Utah @utah.edu. My laboratory will study key aspects of protein synthesis and translational control in healthy and diseased states. #RNAsky sinha.biochem.utah.edu

The Sinha Lab

The Sinha lab studies key aspects of protein synthesis and translational control in healthy and diseased states. We study the multifaceted roles of ribosomes as critical sensors of cellular stress.

sinha.biochem.utah.edu

“What a [sunburned] cell is trying to do is make decisions about whether to live or die based on how damaged the DNA is… but amazingly, it’s the RNA that signals that. That’s the remarkable observation.” — Rachel Green, biologist at Johns Hopkins University. www.quantamagazine.org/rna-is-the-c...

We are happy to share that our snR30 story is finally out in @natureportfolio.nature.com 🥳 We report the first structure of a H/ACA snoRNP acting in ribosome synthesis thereby providing a detailed structural and biochemical view of the snR30 snoRNP guiding local 18S rRNA subdomain folding. 👇👇👇

Happy to share our review on the cellular responses to RNA damage 🥂 Congrats to joined first authors Jacqueline Cordes & @shubozhao.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Cellular responses to RNA damage

RNA plays a central role in protein biosynthesis and performs diverse regulatory and catalytic functions, making it essential for all processes of life. Like DNA, RNA is constantly subjected to damage...

cell.com

Latest work from our next door neighbors! #RNAsky #RNAbiology

Molecular Cell @cp-molcell.bsky.social · last yr.

Online Now: The integrated stress response regulates 18S nonfunctional rRNA decay in mammals

The life of each of us began when a sperm and an egg came together. But what happens at a molecular level? Our latest work in Cell led by @vdeneke.bsky.social & Andreas Blaha reveals a conserved fertilization complex that bridges sperm and egg in vertebrates! (1/11) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Our latest work is out in Nature today! Using smFRET, we directly visualized recruitment of the eIF4F complex to the 5' cap of eukaryotic mRNAs and formation of an activated mRNA. Our findings reveal new and surprising roles for each eIF4F component. 1/3 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

m6A sites in the coding region trigger translation-dependent mRNA decay: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

m6A sites in the coding region trigger translation-dependent mRNA decay

Zhou et al. discovered a specific role of adenosine modifications in the coding region of mRNAs. These chemical alterations slow down the movement of the ribosome during translation and trigger degrad...

cell.com

Hot off the press: new review @AnnualReviews discusses recent time-resolved cryo-EM studies visualizing how ribosome moves and interacts with translation factors to achieve efficient and accurate translation. “The Structural Dynamics of Translation”: https://tinyurl.com/2ezt9st9

This is a very cool paper that I will add to my Mol Bio course. Specific tRNA recruitment of mRNA degradation complex to ribosome through the P site tRNA interactions with CCR4-NOT complex 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Specific tRNAs promote mRNA decay by recruiting the CCR4-NOT complex to translating ribosomes

The CCR4-NOT complex is a major regulator of eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) stability. Slow decoding during translation promotes association of CCR4-NOT with ribosomes, accelerating mRNA degradation....

science.org

So many things happen on proteasomes! It was fun to dig into how a the active thioreductase TXNL1 engages the regulatory particle! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Structure of the TXNL1-bound proteasome

Proteasomes degrade diverse proteins in different cellular contexts through incompletely defined regulatory mechanisms. Here, we report the cryo-EM structure of thioredoxin-like protein 1 (TXNL1) boun...

biorxiv.org