UNIVERSITYCaseWestern ReserveUniversity

RESEARCH/INNOVATION Splicing RNA

AWARDS Young Scientist Award, supported by GE Healthcare and Science

Eight years ago, Saba Valadkhan went where 50 scientists had gone before—all without success. But the 32-year-old wasn’t bothered by past failures, and she continued with molecular biology experiments probing RNA splicing mechanisms as a graduate student at ColumbiaUniversity.

Although DNA is commonly known as life’s genetic blueprint and the repository for genetic information, scientists believe that RNA—similar to DNA in structure but with different functions, including transferring information from DNA—could be the source of many genetic diseases. It took plenty of time For Dr. Valadkhan to get past the molecular riddle that has baffled researchers for 20 years, including the 50 scientists before her: Where and how does the catalytic activity of RNA take place?

Dr. Valadkhan was able to make headway in the mystery of pre-messenger RNA, the primary genetic transcript for synthesizing proteins, and splicing reactions within RNA that affect critical biological functions of cell growth, differentiation, and disease.

The Iranian-born scientist started her career as a doctor in 1996, but decided she wasn’t cut out to practice medicine. Instead, she was lured into research because of the intellectual challenges involved in probing fundamental mechanisms underlying disease in medical research.

Her work has helped open a door into promising research for developing splicing therapies that could someday repair various disorders and genetic diseases, from Alzheimer’s to aging to AIDS. Her work was also recognized with the prestigious Young Scientist Award last March at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Her hard work has also been helped along by a little luck. Dr. Valadkhan recalls one of her serendipitous research moments, when she left an ultraviolet light shining on her cells and found the next day that those UV rays had induced cross-linking of RNA, which are chemical linkages between different RNA molecules (sunburn causes cross-links in RNA). That discovery led to a scientific paper discussing how cross-linking could be used to determine the structure of the RNA.

But what really intrigues Dr. Valadkhan is RNA’s potential as a molecular fossil, providing clues to the primordial world of molecular biology. “The interesting point is these enzymatic molecules are thought to be molecular fossils,” she says. “It is interesting to think that these molecules have evolved over the past 4 billion years.”