(623d) Effects of Ozone and Complex Urban Air Pollution On Post-Transcriptional Modification of Total RNA
AIChE Annual Meeting
2013
2013 AIChE Annual Meeting
Food, Pharmaceutical & Bioengineering Division
Intracellular Processes I
Thursday, November 7, 2013 - 9:24am to 9:42am
Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) is involved in a wide variety of cellular processes, including the translation of genetic information into proteins (messenger RNA), the synthesis of proteins in the ribosome (transfer RNA, tRNA; ribosomal RNA, rRNA), and the regulation of cellular metabolism (non-coding RNA, ncRNA)1–3. The integrity of RNA molecules is hypothesized to be of central importance to cellular health given that the vast majority of RNA functions depend on accurate base pairing with other nucleic acids and proteins1,4–6. Therefore, changes in the sequence or chemical identity of base pairs through mutations or post-transcriptional modifications can significantly alter regulation of all cellular processes. In this study, chemical modifications to RNA were induced by reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS) in the context of various air pollution sources. We will discuss our treatment of purified RNA samples and of human A549 lung epithelium cells with various air exposures at an air-liquid interface that include ozone, simple and complex gas-only pollutant mixtures, and particulate diesel exhaust. We will also discuss our molecular characterization of both of these exposed systems using a variety of techniques that include ELISA, MALDI-TOF and circular dichroism. Our observations reveal that levels of chemical modification and tertiary structure breakdown correlate with complexity of pollution mixtures. We will also discuss implications of these observations on cellular regulation and human health.
References
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6. Esteller, M. Non-coding RNAs in human disease. Nature reviews. Genetics 12, 861–74 (2011).