{"id":19654,"date":"2026-02-06T14:33:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T19:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/?p=19654"},"modified":"2026-02-06T14:33:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T19:33:22","slug":"new-research-from-the-cifuentes-lab-rbpscan-a-quantitative-in-vivo-tool-for-profiling-rna-binding-protein-interactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/2026\/02\/06\/new-research-from-the-cifuentes-lab-rbpscan-a-quantitative-in-vivo-tool-for-profiling-rna-binding-protein-interactions\/","title":{"rendered":"New research from the Cifuentes Lab: RBPscan, a quantitative in vivo tool for profiling RNA-binding protein interactions."},"content":{"rendered":"

New research from the Cifuentes Lab: RBPscan, a quantitative in vivo tool for profiling RNA-binding protein interactions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Researchers in the Cifuentes lab at Boston University have published a new study in Molecular Cell<\/strong><\/em> describing RBPscan<\/strong>, a method that enables quantitative measurement of protein-RNA interactions directly in living cells.<\/p>\n

RNA-binding proteins regulate nearly every step of gene expression, but existing methods have made it difficult to determine where these proteins bind and how strongly they interact with RNA in their native cellular context. RBPscan was developed to address this challenge by combining RNA editing with massively parallel reporter assays to provide a simple, scalable, and quantitative readout of\u00a0protein-RNA interactions in vivo.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The study demonstrates that RBPscan can identify both linear and structured RNA-binding motifs, quantify relative binding affinities across multiple experimental systems including human cells, zebrafish embryos, and yeast, and link binding strength to functional outcomes such as mRNA decay. The method also enables precise mapping of binding sites within full-length transcripts, providing positional information that complements existing approaches.<\/p>\n

By making quantitative analysis of protein-RNA interactions more accessible, RBPscan provides a versatile new tool for studying post-transcriptional gene regulation and opens the door to discovering how RNA-binding proteins function in their native biological contexts.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to the exceptional and dedicated Cifuentes lab team who made this work possible, with Dmitry Kretov spearheading the experimental work and now leading his own lab at CHU de Qu\u00e9bec-Universit\u00e9 Laval Research Center.<\/p>\n

Publisher online February 6th, 2026.<\/p>\n

Links to the paper:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/authors.elsevier.com\/a\/1mZlb3vVUPZNXj<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cell.com\/molecular-cell\/fulltext\/S1097-2765(26)00023-7<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research from the Cifuentes Lab: RBPscan, a quantitative in vivo tool for profiling RNA-binding protein interactions. Researchers in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4668,104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19654"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19657,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19654\/revisions\/19657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/biochemcellbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}