In the beginning was the U1A protein: a personal reflection
- Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge CB2 0QH, United Kingdom
- Corresponding author: kn{at}mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
When I started my own research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular biology in 1987 I was told to initiate a completely new project. I was fascinated by the structures of DNA-protein complexes but this research field was already getting overcrowded. In 1989 the group of Tom Steitz published the structure of glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase in complex with its cognate tRNAs and I became very interested in RNA-protein interactions. I came across an interesting review article by Gideon Dreyfuss on “RNA recognition motif (RRM)” and this small protein domain seemed like a good target for structural studies. We first tried to express the RRM of U1-70k based on the Cell paper published by Charles Query in Jack Keene's lab but our first attempt failed as the expressed protein was not well behaved. Our attempt with U1A was successful and we reported the structure of the first RRM in 1990 and …
