Congrtulations to Dr. Sihem Cheloufi who collaborated with Dr. Qi Chen's group at the Biomedical Department to examine small RNA dynamics during cellular reprogramming and their function in embryonic stem cells.

From the UCR Article:

A team led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, has developed a new RNA-sequencing method— “Panoramic RNA Display by Overcoming RNA Modification Aborted Sequencing,” or PANDORA-seq — that can help discover numerous modified small RNAs that were previously undetectable.

According to Dr. Chen, PANDORA-seq uncovers a surprising small-RNA landscape that is dominated by tsRNAs and rRNA-derived small RNAs, or rsRNAs, rather than microRNAs, which were previously believed to dominate many mammalian tissues and cells.

Dr. Cheloufi said the team now wants to understand how tsRNA/rsRNA are generated, how they function in stem cells, and how they orchestrate cell fate decisions during development. “Answers to these questions are timely to develop diagnostic tools, identify therapeutic targets, and advance regenerative medicine,” she said.

The original story can be found here.