The next installment of the monthly methods-focused webinar series hosted by the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training (NCCAT), along with the Pacific Northwest Center for CryoEM (PNCC), and the Stanford-SLAC CryoEM Center (S2C2) will be held on
Thursday October 28, 2021 at 12 PM eastern / 9 AM pacific time
Helen Donelick, PhD candidate in the Bass and Shen Labs, Department of Biochemistry, University of Utah will present
Structural determination of the Dicer-2•R2D2 complex
Talk Abstract: The ability to fight a viral infection is essential for all organisms. Drosophila melanogaster utilizes RNA interference for the antiviral response. Here, the protein, Dicer-2, is used for small interfering RNA (siRNA) biogenesis and passing one strand of the siRNA into Argonaute-2 to form the active RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) that targets downstream RNA. It has been suggested that the helicase domain of many Dicer proteins is the domain where accessory proteins can bind and modulate function. Still, in Drosophila, we have little structural information on how accessory proteins, such as the small double-stranded RNA binding protein, R2D2, interact with Dicer-2. In this talk, I will present my work studying the complex of Dicer-2•R2D2 and the tricks I used for sample preparation and data processing. These tricks allowed us to achieve our current structure that shows an extra density on the helicase domain of Dicer-2 that we attribute to R2D2.