Ribonucleic Acid Decoys as a Putative Therapeutic for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects thousands of people every year. However, there are no current therapeutics that exist that are able to reduce the toxicity of ALS, but there are potential therapeutics that have been studied. By using the known genome of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, I was able to study the introns in S. Cerevisiaein order to determine which introns could be the most successful in helping create a therapeutic. The desired categories are that the intron contained a specific consensus sequence, is homologous to human introns, is stress-resistant, and is essential. From the research, no introns fit into all of the desired categories, but the intron with the most promise is located in the S. Cerevisiae gene YER133W. Given that this intron has the most promise, it can now be isolated and tested to see if it could play a role in creating a therapeutic to reduce the toxicity of ALS.