Rachael C. Kretsch

I am a structural biophysicist with an interdisciplinary background in biochemistry, cryo-electron microscopy, and computational modeling. I am broadly interested in understanding how biomolecules fold, move, and interact in 3D space, and how these complex dynamics dictate their function in various environments. Through community benchmarks, I demonstrated that RNA structure prediction algorithms lack accuracy due to data scarcity; I addressed this gap by resolving novel, complex RNA folds and assemblies, revealing structural complexity that were previously unimagined. Beyond static structure, my research explores dynamic properties such as conformational ensembles and solvation networks. Currently, I am expanding this work to bridge the gap between in vitro structural models and in situ biological relevance, investigating how biomolecular systems evolve structural adaptations to chemical and environmental inputs.