Structured RNA elements are an important and quite unexplored drug target. Since its discovery, RNA was thought to act merely as intermediate infrastructural component (rRNA, tRNA) and messenger (mRNA) between genes and proteins. However, during the last decades, RNAs have proved to be tremendously versatile molecules. They play a pivotal role in numerous cellular key processes, such as metabolite sensing, catalytic regulation of gene expression, development and differentiation. Thus, RNA functions are almost as multifaceted, as those of proteins and they aquire intricate three-dimensional structures, thanks to which they carry out these tasks. Structured RNA elements in the 5'UTR of mRNAs regulate the translation through enabling or preventing interactions with proteins of the translational machinery (see Fig.)

We are funded by the 'Fonds der chemischen Industrie', CiPSM and DFG and interested in the structure-function relationship of RNA binding proteins, which we are probing using molecular biology, biochemistry and X-ray crystallography. Currently we are establishing an in vivo screening assay to find selective inhibitors for RNA protein interactions, specifically targeting structured RNA elements involved in gene regulation.