Congratulations to the Hopper lab whose recent paper "Free introns of tRNAs as complementarity-dependent regulators of gene expression" was highlighted by Ohio State News. This outstanding paper, led by first author Regina Nostramo, identifies functional roles for tRNA introns during stress, playing roles in the regulation of mRNAs with complementary sequences. The outcome of five years of research, the identification of “fitRNAs,” (short for free introns of tRNAs) represents a novel class of small RNAs with a similar function, but distinct mechanism from that described for microRNAs. Anita and Regina were joined in this work by Paolo Sinopoli (third year Molecular Genetics major), Lauren Peltier (former Molecular Genetics Major, now at the University of Toledo), Alicia Bao (former Biomedical Sciences major, now at Thomas Jefferson University), and Sara Metcalf (former Molecular Genetics major, now a technician in the Hopper lab).

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