Allain Group

We are interested in understanding at atomic level the interaction between proteins and RNA at the heart of pre-mRNA splicing and/or RNA editing.

Almost 20% of genetic diseases originate from a post-transcriptional misregulation of gene expression that is often caused by splicing, RNA editing or translation defects. The knowledge of parameters involved in these misregulations at the molecular level can help understanding these diseases and finding out new ways of treatment. Example of diseases we investigate the molecular mechanism of, are Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Myotonic Dystrophy (DM) or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Our key technique to investigate structurally these mechanisms is the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy which allows us to solve the structures of key protein-RNA complexes, which we combine in an interdisciplinary approach with a range of cell-culture, biochemical, biophysical and computational techniques.