On August 10, 2022, Dr. Hao Hu, a postdoc fellow in Institute of Integrative Genome Biology at University of California, gave a presentation entitled “RNA 5’ end modification: Discovery, processing, and potential role.”

Dr. Hu is currently a postdoc fellow in Prof. Xuemei Chen’s club. Prof. Chen, a membership of National Academy of Sciences (USA), is now a Furuta Chair Professor and the director of the Institute of Integrative Genome Biology at University of California, Riverside. She is known particularly for her pioneering studies on the biology of small RNAs. Recently, Chen lab reported noncanonical 5'modification of RNAs was widespread in Arabidopsis and rice. Upon high-throughput sequencing, Chen lab identified the distribution and function of 5' NAD-capped RNAs and their role in RNA elements. Chen lab has published over 170 articles with representative in Nature, Science, PNAS journals.

In the presentation, Dr. Hu introduced their work about RNA 5’ end modification, and explained its discovery, processing, and potential role. This team discovered that the first generation NAD captureSeq performed deficiencies in maintaining of NAD capped RNA (NAD-RNA) full length, false positive and overestimated expression. They established a Click Chemistry-based, copper-free method for enrichment of NAD-RNA and a SPAAC-seq method for NAD-RNA high-throughput sequencing. Referring against input mRNA, they applied SPAAC-seq to re-sequence and re-identifyArabidopsis NAD-RNA.

In the lecture, Dr. Hu used many figures to present his research results, which appealed to students vividly. Finally, Dr. Hu discussed issues related to the conceptual understanding and experimental design of RNA epigenetics with the participants.