Congratulations to Katrina Kutchko (Alain Laederach’s lab), who recently co-authored a paper titled “A functional riboSNitch in the 3’UTR of FKBP5 alters microRNA-320a binding efficiency and mediates vulnerability to chronic posttraumatic pain.” The paper was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and featured in a recent blog post by NIH director Francis Collins. In collaboration with Samuel McLean and Sarah Linnstaedt (Anesthesiology) a variant in the 3’ UTR of the FKBP5 gene was identified to be predictive of how likely pain is to persist after a traffic accident. Katrina modeled the RNA structure of the 3’ UTR identifying an important conformational switch regulating the affinity of a miRNA. You can read the paper at http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2018/08/27/JNEUROSCI.3458-17.2018.long, and Dr. Collins’ blog post at https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2018/09/04/researchers-elucidate-role-of-stress-gene-in-chronic-pain/.
Katrina Kutchko
