2019 Undergraduate Summer Research Program Participant
Home Department: Biomedical Computation
Mentor: Howard Chang, Dermatology and Genetics
RNA can be utilized as a delivery system for gene expression: more specifically, circular RNAs (circRNAs) can be used as a platform for targeted gene expression due to their stability and long half-life. Fan will use high-throughput library screening and machine learning to develop a systematic method for identifying the ribosome entry sites where circRNAs initiate protein translation. Fan will analyze the differences in these site sequences in different cell types. This will provide insight for future researchers to build circRNA delivery therapeutic platforms.