Briber Co-authors Paper on RNA Folding

Professor Robert M. Briber, Chairman, Materials Science and Engineering.

Professor Briber was a co-author on a paper published in Physical Review Letters, a top scientific journal. The work was titled "Persistence Length Changes Dramatically as RNA Folds", and was a collaborative work between scientists at UMD (Briber, Thirumalai and Hyeon), JHU (Woodson, Caliksan) and NIST (Perez-Salas). The work describes x-ray and neutron scattering experiments on the folding process of RNA. The work is leading to a deeper understanding of the biophysical processes in the cell and could eventually lead to insight allowing for more targeted drug treatments.

Published June 1, 2006