| People
- Faculty
- Professor:
Luc Jaeger |
| Field(s): |
Biochemistry/Materials |
 |
| Email: |
jaeger@chem.ucsb.edu |
| Phone: |
(805)
893-3628 |
Fax:
(805)
893-4210 |
| Office: |
4649A PSB North |
 |
Selected
Publications |
|
Go
to Research Group website |
| Bio: |
Dr. Jaeger received a "Magistère" degree
(M.S) in Chemistry and Biology from the University Louis
Pasteur of Strasbourg in 1990, and his PhD in Structural
Biochemistry and Biophysics from the same university in
1993. After postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research
Institute (La Jolla, CA), he worked as a CNRS research
scientist at the "Institut de Biologie Moléculaire
et Cellulaire" in Strasbourg, from 1995 to 2002.
He joined the faculty at UCSB in 2002. |
|
Current
Research
Research projects in Jaeger's lab are all related to RNA tectonics,
a new LEGO game for supra-molecular chemists and biochemists.
It refers to the construction of artificial RNA architectures
with novel properties and takes advantage of the knowledge of
folding and assembly rules governing the three-dimensional shape
of complex natural RNA molecules. State-of-the-art RNA tectonics
combines a broad range of theoretical and experimental approaches
at the interfaces of chemistry, biology, and physics.
Deciphering
the logic of RNA self-assembly
We are presently undertaking a major effort to characterize
self-autonomous folding and assembly properties of various
RNA structural motifs found in the ribosome. This work aims
(i) at characterizing RNA regions that contribute to the overall
assembly of the ribosome in the absence of proteins and (ii)
at defining new RNA structural and assembly principles for
RNA 3D structure prediction.
Design and engineering of programmable self-assembling materials based on RNA and other nucleic acids
The incredible informative power of RNA biopolymers should
allow, in theory, to direct the self-assembly of hundreds
of different molecules, and to specify the precise positioning
of each of these molecules within a predefined network. RNA
tectonics is presently used to build programmable RNA molecules
able to self-assemble into two, three and four dimensional
nano-arrays. The application of self-assembling RNA and other nucleic acids to biosensors and nano-electronic devices is also investigated.
RNA
structural evolution
Different complex catalytic RNA molecules (ribozymes) that
share a common structural scaffold associated to different
catalytic domains, have been isolated from a large library
of RNA sequences by in vitro Darwinian evolution techniques
(SELEX). The common structural scaffold within these ribozymes
undergoes divergent evolution as a consequence of its association
with different catalytic domains, offering an unprecedented
way to study RNA evolution at a three-dimensional level.
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| Selected
Research Publications |
| Chworos, A, Severcan, I., Koyfman, A. Y., Wienkam, P., Oroudjev, E., Hansma, H. G. & Jaeger, L. (2004). Building programmable jigsaw puzzles with RNA. Science 306, 2068-2072 |
| Liu, B., Baudrey, S., Jaeger, L. & Bazan, G.C. (2004). Characterization of tectoRNA assembly with cationic conjugated polymers. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 4076-4077. |
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Jaeger, L., Westhof, E. & Leontis, N.B (2001). TectoRNA: Modular assembly units for the construction of RNA nano-objects. Nucleic Acids Res. 29, 455-463.
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| Jaeger, L. & Leontis, N.B. (2000). Tecto-RNA: One-dimensional Self-assembly through Tertiary Interactions. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 39, 2521-2524; Angew. Chem. 112, 2576-2580. |
| Jaeger, L., Wright, M. C. & Joyce, G. F. (1999). A complex ligase ribozyme evolved in vitro from a group I ribozyme domain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96, 14712-14717. |
| Jaeger,
L. (1997). The new world of ribozymes. Current Opinion in
Structural Biology, 7, 324-335. |
Westhof, E. Masquida, B. & Jaeger L. (1996). RNA tectonics: towards RNA design. Folding and Design 1, 78-88.
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