Kamil Slowikowski: Reverse transcriptase SuperScript III adds non-templated bases during cDNA polymerization

The Lowe lab works extensively on Archaea, one of the three domains of life (the others are Bacteria and Eukarya). Many archaea are extremophiles, some of which live in extreme environments like acid mine drains or volcanic hot springs. Phylogenetic trees based on ribosomoal RNA reveal that archaea are more closely related to eukaryotes than bacteria. Also, some eukaryotic biological pathways are present in simplified forms in archaeal organisms, so insights about Archaea may be applicable to eukaryotes.

Kamil focused on the task of finding evidence for RNA circularization in 12 samples of RNA-Seq data for six species of Archaea. The samples varied by experimental size-selection of RNA and, for some species, by DNA polymerase used during PCR amplification. Kamil developed a script to identify reads where the first half of the read maps just downstream of the second half, a situation called "wraparound". This, together with other evidence discovered by Andrew Uzilov, supports hypotheses that specific types of circular RNA exist. During the investigation, Kamil also found evidence suggesting that reverse transcriptase SuperScript III performs non-template nucleotide addition.

Kamil is a senior Bioinformatics major and Biostatistics and Philosophy minor at Loyola University Chicago. His goal is to attend graduate school and pursue a Ph.D. in Computational Biology.