Using a Mobile Laboratory to Promote College-Level Outreach and Graduate Student Engagement in Precollege STEM Literacy.

This article presents a case study about the impact that our mobile laboratory, the Rutgers Science Explorer bus, has had on the professional development of graduate students and content enrichment for the middle school communities in the state of New Jersey.

Combinatorial mRNA binding by AUF1 and Argonaute 2 controls decay of selected target mRNAs.

The RNA-binding protein AUF1 binds AU-rich elements in 3'-untranslated regions to regulate mRNA degradation and/or translation. Many of these mRNAs are predicted microRNA targets as well. An emerging theme in post-transcriptional control of gene expression is that RNA-binding proteins and microRNAs co-regulate mRNAs.

A birth-to-death view of mRNA from the RNA recognition motif perspective.

RNA binding proteins are a large and varied group of factors that are the driving force behind post-transcriptional gene regulation. By analogy with transcription factors, RNA binding proteins bind to various regions of the mRNAs that they regulate, usually upstream or downstream from the coding region, and modulate one of the five major processes in mRNA metabolism: splicing, polyadenylation, export, translation and decay. The most abundant RNA binding protein domain is called the RNA Recognition Motif (RRM)1.