Additional Information

Dr. Arango investigated the distribution and function of N4-acetylcytidine in messenger RNA. His efforts on this project led to the discovery of N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C) as a novel mRNA modification that is catalyzed by the enzyme N-acetyltransferase 10 (NAT10). Functional studies further demonstrated that acetylation of cytidines in mRNA has a position-specific function. Transcripts bearing ac4C in coding regions (CDS) promote translation elongation and mRNA stability, whereas ac4C in the 5’ Untranslated Region (5’UTR) inhibits translation initiation.