Role of microRNA editing in human diseases

The central dogma of molecular biology states that the information content of DNA sequence is transferred to RNA and then to proteins. However, processes like RNA-editing can change RNA sequence and thus change the information resulting into altered function. Editing in RNA has been shown to be important in many human diseases. The role of such alterations in non-coding RNAs – especially microRNAs is underexplored. We attempt to investigate role of microRNA editing with respect to human disease, especially cancer. Students involved in this will learn next generation sequencing and variant analysis of small RNA and molecular biology experiments to assess the cellular impact of the identified editing events.