Lela Lackey

The paper investigates how RNA sequence and structure influence splicing of the MAP3K7 intron, showing that branchpoint mutations strongly affect cryptic splice-site usage and that structural changes in RNA binding protein hotspots correlate with splicing outcomes.

The paper investigates sequence and structural features of neural microexons in humans and chickens, showing dynamic regulation and structural accessibility in the branchpoint-to-3' splice site region.

The paper identifies sequence and structural differences between SF3B1-sensitive and resistant cryptic 3' splice sites, showing SF3B1-sensitive sites are weaker and less structurally distinct.

The paper shows that IL-6 induces altered polyadenylation in SERPINA1, increasing long 3UTR isoforms that repress A1AT protein expression during inflammation.

The paper predicts variant effects on alternative splicing using structural probing data and a computational framework, achieving 90% accuracy for splice-altering variants.