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Biographical Information:Anna Marie Pyle is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 1997. Dr. Pyle obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University in 1990. During her graduate work with Professor Jacqueline K. Barton, Dr. Pyle developed transition-metal complexes for recognizing DNA microstructures and initiating site-specific redox chemistry. Dr. Pyle was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Thomas Cech, where she began her studies on molecular recognition of RNA. Specifically, she investigated the role of 2’-hydroxyl groups in the stabilization of RNA tertiary structure. Dr. Pyle formed her own research group in 1992 in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center. In 2002, she moved to Yale University, where she leads a research group that specializes in structure and function of large RNA molecules and RNA remodeling enzymes. Dr. Pyle teaches the undergraduate Molecular Biology course at Yale, where she also leads initiatives to rebuild basic science infrastructure. At Brookhaven National labs, she is the vice-chair of the Science and Technology Steering Committee and on Beamline Advisory Teams at the NSLSII light source. Dr. Pyle was recently elected president of the RNA Society and she previously served as chair of the MSFA Study Section, permanent member on the MSFE and MGB Study Sections at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pyle has organized numerous meetings, including Gordon Conferences, FASEB, Keystone and Telluride Meetings. She is the Co-Editor of Methods in Enzymology and serves on the Editorial Boards of eLife and the Journal of Molecular Biology. Dr. Pyle is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received two awards from the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Pyle is the author of over 170 publications. The Pyle laboratory uses a diverse set of biochemical and biophysical techniques, including crystallography and chemical probing, to understand the structural complexity of RNA architecture. She pioneered the study of RNA helicase enzymes and other RNA-stimulated ATPases that serve as translocases, RNA remodeling enzymes, folding cofactors and signaling enzymes in the cell. Her experimental work is complemented by efforts to develop new computational tools for modeling, analyzing and predicting RNA structure.
