Andrei Korostelev's Biography

Andrei Korostelev, Associate Professor, RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School

The Korostelev laboratory elucidates structural mechanisms of translational control. Our areas of focus are: (1) translation mechanism, (2) ribosome-dependent stress responses underlying bacterial pathogenicity, (3) viral translation in eukaryotic cells. We have made essential contributions to the understanding of these areas, building on our expertise in X-ray and cryo-EM method development, ribosome structure determination and biochemistry. Translation is governed by the dynamics of the translational apparatus. We use “ensemble cryo-EM” to reconstruct dynamic structural pathways at high resolution. For example, by resolving six ribosome intermediates in a single sample, we described translocation of viral IRES mRNA through the eukaryotic ribosome. In another study, four structural intermediates of the stringent factor RelA on the 70S ribosome elucidated how the transcriptional stringent response is activated by deacyl-tRNA resulting from cellular stress. Recently, we addressed a long-standing problem of accurate mRNA decoding on the ribosome by visualizing six intermediates of codon reading by cognate and near-cognate tRNA complexes.