Biography
Roy Parker is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Executive Director, BioFrontiers Institute; Cech-Leinwand Endowed Chair of Biochemistry and Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco and completed his Postdoctoral work at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. His research focuses on the translation, localization and degradation of eukaryotic RNA, how cells regulate different steps in this process to modulate gene expression, and how alterations in RNA regulation lead to human disease. He has served on, and chaired, the NIH CDF-1 study section, and co-organized the Nucleic Acids Gordon Conference (1997), the RNA Processing Meeting at CSHL (2001), and the 2004 FASEB Conference on Post-Transcriptional Control (2004). He is, or has been, on the editorial boards of MCB, Science, Cell, RNA, Nucleic Acids Research, and was an editor of the Journal of Cell Biology and eLife. He was the President of the RNA Society (2010). He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2010) and Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012).
Abstract
RNP Granules in Health and Disease
RNP Granules are large assemblies of RNAs and proteins that are ubiquitous in eukaryotic cells. RNP granules form, in part, by a process of RNA “aggregation” and cells maintain an RNA chaperone network to maintain soluble functional RNAs. Evolution has created functions for RNP granules in RNA localization, antiviral defense, stress survival, and other regulatory roles of cell physiology. In addition, the formation of RNP granules can contribute to a number of human pathologies, including tumor progression and neurodegenerative diseases.