Jay Querido, University of Michigan RNA Faculty Fall 2022

We are thrilled to announce that Jay Brito Querido as agreed to join us as a faculty member in Biological Chemistry, the Center for RNA Biomedicine, and the LSI.

About Dr. Brito Querido:
A native of Cape Verde, Dr. Querido received undergraduate and M.S. degrees at the University of Lisbon. For his Ph.D., Dr. Querido worked with Dr. Yaser Hashem in Strasbourg, France using cryo-EM to study parasite-specific ribosomal proteins. Dr. Querido then moved to Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan’s lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology for post-doctoral work, where he has tackled longstanding questions surrounding translation initiation on eukaryotic mRNAs. Most prominently, Dr. Querido determined the structure of a 48S translation initiation complex and suggested a novel mechanism for ribosome recruitment and mRNA scanning (Brito Querido et al., Science 2020).

Future Scientific Plans:
Currently, Dr. Querido is exploring translation initiation on structured mRNAs and the role of the human tumor suppressor protein Pdcd4 in regulating translation. Dr. Querido has exciting plans to continue in this field, with a goal of understanding the many ways in which RNA helicases regulate gene expression in health and disease.

If you would like to reach out to welcome Jay, you may contact him here: jquerido@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk