Awarded in 2015
Home Department: Applied Physics
Faculty Advisors: Joseph Puglisi (Structural Biology) and Zev Bryant (Bioengineering)

Research Title: Understanding modulation in translation elongation dynamics that changes decoding of the genetic code

Research Description: In all organisms, translation is the last stage of information transfer from genes to proteins. Translation involves interactions between many factors including messenger RNAs, carriers of genetic information from DNA, and ribosomes, bio-machines that read messenger RNAs and synthesize corresponding proteins. However, little is known about how translation is altered by biologically relevant obstacles such as chemical modifications of mRNA, structured parts of mRNA, and other translating ribosomes on mRNA. Choi proposes to expand currently available single-molecule biophysical tools to observe how these obstacles affect translational dynamics.

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Junhong is an Assistant Member of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.