Question: What is the most interesting or important discovery you have done regarding RNA research?

Angela Downie answered on 13 Jul 2020:

Hi Eva!
Thanks for your question! As much as I would like to say that I have found out things that have completely changed the world… well I haven’t really. But I have found very small new bits of information that I find quite interesting, and will hopefully help someone else in their research in the future!
During my PhD I worked with a group of miRNAs, which are a special type of RNA that help turn our genes ‘off’ or ‘on’. The group of miRNAs I was working on has been seen to be important in a bunch of diseases, specially related to heart injuries. However, we didn’t know how our cells know when these miRNAs should be made.. so this is what I was trying to find out.. I still haven’t solved the puzzle but I found two proteins that were involved in controlling these miRNAs that before we thought only had very different jobs! To me this is exciting, because these proteins might be important in controlling lots of different miRNAs and they might even help us understand how different processes in our cells are connected!