Blog Post

Dr. Christine Roden recently started her research group in the Department Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Montréal, where she studies RNA viruses.  She is originally from the United States where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh and her PhD in Genetics from Yale University. Her PhD work was on RNA sequence and structure features that promote primary miRNA processing by the Drosha/DGCR8 complex. After graduation, Dr. Roden decided to leverage her skills in manipulating RNA to help interrogate the role of mRNA sequences and structures in controlling biomolecular condensation. Biomolecular condensates are non-membrane bound, micron scale assemblies of biological polymers like RNA and protein. Condensates play a central role in cellular organization, forming organelles like the nucleolus, heterochromatin, nuclear pore complex, paraspeckles, and stress granules. Many functions have been ascribed to condensates including altering enzyme reaction kinetics, sensing of environmental stresses (such as temperature), increasing local concentration of molecules, selective permeability (i.e., nuclear pore), disrupting membrane curvature, and buffering cellular response to noise. Disrupted biomolecular condensates are thought to lead to diseases such as ALS and infertility.

To explore the functions of RNA in biomolecular condensation, Dr. Roden joined Dr. Amy Gladfelter’s lab for her post-doctoral work in 2019 at the University of North Carolina and Duke University. She chose Dr. Gladfelter’s lab after reading her fascinating Science paper in 2018. In her paper, Dr. Gladfelter described how messenger RNA sequence and structure could control biomolecular condensation, keeping transcripts required to perform different tasks in the same cytoplasm in distinct locations for function. A consequence of disrupted mRNA sequence and structure was failure to maintain transcript immiscibility and proper localization resulting in altered branching and synchronous nuclear division in the model fungus. This work implied RNA was an essential architectural polymer in biomolecular condensates, storing information in sequence beyond instructions for protein. The next logical step was to determine “the code within the genetic code”. Dr. Roden was convinced that she could leverage her existing skills manipulating RNA sequence and structure, acquired during her graduate work on miRNAs, to define the molecular cues which govern condensation and encode material properties. Having initially started her research in the Gladfelter lab model fungal system, Dr. Roden abruptly transitioned to work on SARS-CoV-2 in the spring of 2020 after recognizing that the viral structural Nucleocapsid protein (N-protein) was likely to undergo condensation with viral RNA based on analysis of protein sequence. In her Post-Doc., Dr. Roden spent her pandemic characterizing the viral RNA sequence and structure features that regulate biomolecular condensation of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein with important implications for viral replication and assembly.

To continue exciting work on this model system, Dr. Roden started her own lab in the Department at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) in August of 2024. While working at UdeM, she hopes to continue using plus strand RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 to uncover basic principals about how information is stored within RNA sequence and structure to control macromolecular assembly processes important for viral replication. She is particularly interested in leveraging this information to develop new experimental techniques to disrupt or enhance biomolecular condensates with the ultimate goal of developing novel therapies. Dr. Roden is extremely excited and grateful to be joining the vibrant RNA community at UdeM and in Canada. For more information visit her webpage https://biochimie.umontreal.ca/departement/professeurs/profil/roden-christine/in37755/.