Johns Hopkins MedicineJul 2 2024 In a recent study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine suggest the cell's messenger RNA -; the major translator and regulator of genetic material -; along with a critical protein called ZAK, spur the cell's initial response to UV radiation damage and play a critical role in whether the cell lives or dies.
Rachel Green, Ph.D., a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Daniel Nathans Director of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine A more comprehensive understanding of how cellular life-and-death decisions are made upon encountering UV radiation could help investigators understand underlying causes of skin and other cancers, says Niladri Sinha, Ph.D., Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Companies developing drugs that target ribosomes may also find that ZAK could be a driver of cell death across cancer types, he says.
Green co-led the research with Sergi Regot, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Alban Ordureau, Ph.D., assistant member of the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's Sloan Kettering Institute and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell.
Funding for this research was provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health , a National Science Foundation Career grant, the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Fellowship, and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Sloan Kettering Institute startup funds, Pew Charitable Trusts, a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center support grant, and the Basic Science Research Program from the National Research Foundation of Korea;...