While Alex Quillin, PhD ’25, was a graduate student in the lab of Jennifer Heemstra, the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences, she led a team of chemists studying how cells create messages using the language of RNA — messages in constant need of editing to help avoid cancer and other diseases.
The editing process had been largely invisible at the cellular level — until one day it wasn’t. In this video, both Quillin and Heemstra describe what it was like to look through the microscope and realize what they had potentially discovered.
“What Alex’s technology allows us to do is to see the modifications in the RNA when it’s still in the cells,” Heemstra says. “That’s going to be really powerful for being able to study the role of this modification in cancer and all of these other diseases.”
Read more about the discovery on The Ampersand website.
Read more about Quillin and how she is is working in a new collaboration with MilliporeSigma to commercialize the tool.
And see more of why this is What WashU Can Do.
