Congratulations to Arthur Burghes (Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and adjunct faculty in Molecular Genetics) who is the Principal Investigator on a recently awarded Accelerator Grant from the 2022 President's Research Excellence program entitled "Determining primary splicing changes in Spinal Muscular Atrophy". Together with collaborators Guramrit Singh (Molecular Genetics) and Anton Blatnik, Dr. Burghes will examine the dysregulation of splicing in Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMN). SMN-deficiency in Spinal Muscular Atrophy reduces assembly of spliceosome components. How this leads to motor neuron loss is unknown. This project proposes to use a spliceosome footprinting approach to zoom in on altered splicing events to identify genes sensitive to SMN-deficiency.

Congratulations to all!