Mitchell R. O’Connell

tRNA-derived second messengers confer bacterial immunity

The paper identifies a bacterial immune pathway where tRNA cleavage generates second messengers that trigger cell death via RNA-guided nuclease activity.

Transfer RNA acetylation regulates in vivo mammalian stress signaling

This study shows that tRNA acetylation regulates stress signaling in mammals by affecting ribosome function and interacting with the Gcn2 kinase.

CUT&Tag Identifies Repetitive Genomic Loci that are Excluded from ChIP Assays

The paper compares ChIP-Seq and CUT&Tag for chromatin modification detection, finding CUT&Tag better captures repetitive elements and heterochromatin regions.

New design strategies for ultra-specific CRISPR-Cas13a-based RNA-diagnostic tools with single-nucleotide mismatch sensitivity

This paper develops new CRISPR-Cas13a variants and crRNA design strategies to improve RNA-detection specificity, achieving better discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 strains.