Alejandra Agredo

Current Research Interests:

One of the main challenges of miRNA study is that predicting miRNA targets by algorithms is imprecise due to non-contiguous base-pairing regions with frequent internal secondary structures. The rule over the last decade is that miRNA-targeting interaction is mediated by the “seed” region and that pairing outside the seed region stabilizes the interaction. However, there is substantial evidence for exceptions. Furthermore, a longstanding riddle of miRNA biology is the existence and conservation of miRNA families as they share the same seed sequence, but, have different sequences at the 3’ end. The unknown lies within understanding what the targeting specificity between family members is. Hence, uncovering these target preferences will explain the biological need for conservation of miRNA families. In an aim to expand our current miRNA targeting knowledge we propose to develop a technique to increase miRNA targets-chimeras formation in cells for miRNA target identification.