Jiarui “Gerry” Song

Email: gerry_song@tamu.edu

B.S in Shandong University, China (2015) Pursuing Ph.D. at Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas (2015-present)

Research Interest: My research focus is to identify a RNA binding protein AtLa1 as a potential component involved in the Arabidopsis TER2 (Telomerase RNA 2) processing. Based on pervious study from this lab, there are three different telomerase RNAs in A. thaliana, and the non-canonical telomerase RNA- TER2 performs as negative regulator of telomerase activity. Further research has shown that AtLa1 can recognize and interact with the specific region of TER2, which suggests the hypothesis that AtLa1 is one missing component of TER2 processing or even TERs regulation. Biochemical and genetic approaches are used for identifying the telomere-related function of AtLa1. The second project is to determine whether another bona fide La protein- AtLa2 involves in the TERs maturation.