Nicole Mott

Research Interests

Recently, long noncoding RNAs have been shown to interact directly with the DNA duplex to regulate gene transcription and translation. Elucidating the locations in the genome where such interactions are occurring could provide insight into the regulatory mechanism underlying several genes. My project involves using the hybrid-binding domain isolated from the Human RNase H1 protein. The N-terminal domain of this protein has been shown to preferentially bind RNA-DNA hybrids (Nowotny et al., 2008.) Using this protein, I hope to provide an unbiased workflow for identifying and characterizing places on the genome where RNA-DNA hybrids are occurring, starting with Escherichia coli as the model organism.