From the Inside UCR News Article by Iqbal Pittalwala:

Gregor Blaha an assistant professor of biochemistry at UC Riverside, is a coauthor on a research paper published last week in the journal Science that reports on the cryo-electron microscopy structures of several complexes of RNA polymerase bound to the ribosome. 

In all living cells, RNA polymerase transcribes DNA into RNA and the ribosome translates the RNA into proteins. RNA polymerase and the ribosome are two of the most well-studied proteins in all of molecular biology, but almost all studies on these proteins look at them individually instead of them working together as they do in the cell. How these proteins interact with one another has puzzled scientists for decades.

“Our work is a breakthrough in the emerging field of transcription-translation coupling, a field that promises to provide a better understanding of gene expression in bacteria,” said Blaha, who provided key material for this study and was involved in the interpretation and discussion of the results. “It opens up new venues to target antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

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