WEHI Postgraduate Seminar Series hosted by the Education Committee

Dr Jacki Heraud-Farlow

Laboratory Head – Molecular Sciences division, WEHI

It’s Probably Contamination: How RNA Biology Keeps Getting Discovered by Accident

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

The central dogma of molecular biology, that information flows unidirectionally from DNA to RNA to protein, has been proven wrong time and again. But did you know that many of the foundational discoveries about RNA were found by someone who thought their experiment had failed — a control that worked, a technique that wouldn’t work, sequencing reads that no aligner would keep, an enzymatic reaction with no protein. I’ll take you through a few of my favourites, old and very new, and make the case that these aren’t lucky breaks, but often the same discovery repeated.

Jacki Heraud-Farlow is a Lab Head in the Molecular Sciences Division at WEHI. Her group studies how the cell marks our own RNA as self, what happens in children when that system fails, and whether it can be manipulated therapeutically. She has spent 18 years being repeatedly surprised by RNA and has come to regard this as the point rather than an occupational hazard. She is a committed RNA enthusiast, an advocate for taking anomalies seriously, and remains convinced that some of the most interesting results in labs are currently sitting in a discard pile.

All welcome!