Elena Dolgosheina

Dr. Elena Dolgosheina is interested in the design of RNA imaging methodologies. In that respect, she has been involved in the development of the first generation of RNA Mango, which is a state of the art RNA tracking and RNA protein (RNP) purification system. It consists of a set of four Mango aptamers and a suite of multifunctional small molecule fluorophores that together enable live cell RNA tracking, fixed cell RNA imaging, single molecule techniques, such as fluorescent cross correlation analysis and RNP purification. These small, extremely high affinity aptamers are structurally interesting and consist of G-quadraplex cores that are isolated from external sequence by novel RNA motifs. The aptamers, which have unusually high binding affinity for their fluorophore partners, offer intrinsically high contrast imaging solutions and, simultaneously, enable RNP pull down type assays. Moreover, the development of orthogonal RNA aptamers that will enable a suite of two-colour RNA labeling approaches is currently underway.