Nobel Prize Awarded to 2024 RNA Symposium Speaker Drew Weissman

Nobel Prize Awarded to 2024 RNA Symposium Speaker Drew Weissman

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. 1  Read the full press release. Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D., will be featured as a keynote speaker at the Center for RNA Biomedicine’s 8th annual RNA Symposium in March, 2024 at the University of…

LSA researcher Monica Dus named White House Fellow

LSA researcher Monica Dus named White House Fellow

A University of Michigan researcher has been appointed a 2023-24 White House Fellow. Monica Dus, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology in LSA, was chosen through a highly competitive selection process for her efforts in communicating science to the public. Dus was placed with the Department of the Navy. “I am so honored…

Dus and Wilinski publish significant discovery in insulin synthesis in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
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Dus and Wilinski publish significant discovery in insulin synthesis in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

The discovery of insulin has saved the lives of millions of people with diabetes worldwide, but little is known about the first step of insulin synthesis. Researchers at the University of Michigan have uncovered part of this mystery. Examining messenger RNAs involved in the production of insulin in fruit flies, they found that a chemical…

Dr. Michelle Hastings New Director of the M-RNA Therapeutics Initiative at The Center for RNA Biomedicine

Dr. Michelle Hastings New Director of the M-RNA Therapeutics Initiative at The Center for RNA Biomedicine

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Michelle Hastings has joined us as a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology, and Director of the M-RNA Therapeutics Initiative at The Center for RNA Biomedicine. Dr. Hastings will lead one of the largest teams of RNA scientists in the world, as Director of M-RNA Therapeutics within…

Rachel Niederer, University of Michigan RNA Faculty Fall 2022

We are thrilled to announce that Rachel Niederer as agreed to join us as a faculty member in Biological Chemistry, the Center for RNA Biomedicine, and the LSI. About Dr. Rachel Niederer: Dr. Niederer completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, College Park in Biochemistry and Cell Biology/Molecular Genetics where she worked with Dr….

After COVID-19, mRNA vaccines could treat flu, HIV and even cancer

By Justin P. Hicks | jhicks3@mlive.com Vaccines to protect against severe illness and death from COVID-19 started as the key to a return to normal, but they could wind up unlocking much more for the future of health care. The mRNA vaccine technology used by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna for their respective coronavirus vaccines has been heavily…

Arul Chinnaiyan awarded prestigious Sjöberg Prize for cancer research

Renowned U-M researcher is recognized by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for pioneering prostate cancer discovery ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Arul M. Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., S.P. Hicks Professor of Pathology and Urology at Michigan Medicine, was awarded the 2022 Sjöberg Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which also awards Nobel Prizes. Chinnaiyan is…

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Koutmou and Koutmos results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

A University of Michigan team of biochemists, led by Kristin Koutmou, Ph.D., and Markos Koutmos, Ph.D., Assistant Professors in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Biophysics, is reframing the understanding of the biology of a class of enzymes called Pseudouridine Synthases (Pus enzymes). These enzymes modify many types of RNAs, and the Koutmou and…

CRISPR to KLIPP cancer

While most efforts involving CRISPR are focused on genome editing, the CRISPR machinery could also be used as a molecular weapon to slice up chromosomes of cancer cells. Research has shown that chromosomes may undergo a “catastrophic” event early in the process of carcinogenesis causing multiple breakages. While many cells die in such events, some…

Dr. Rajesh Rao receives a Career Advancement Award from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB).

Congratulations to Dr. Rajesh Rao for receiving a Career Advancement Award from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB). The Career Advancement Award assists outstanding early-career vision scientists in pursuit of ongoing research of unusual significance and promise. This one-time award is available to candidates who have already received their first NIH R01 and are collecting new…

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A publication by Dr. Barmada and his team is “Editor’s pick” of the Journal of Biological Chemistry

Sami Barmada, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Neurology and member of the Center for RNA Biomedicine, with Nathaniel Safren, Ph.D., from Northwestern University, and other UM colleagues, was awarded “Editor’s pick” by the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). This recognition signals “a top-rated paper published in JBC across the field of biological chemistry, as determined by JBC’s Associate Editors, Editorial Board…

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Unveiling the hidden cellular logistics of memory storage in neurons

Exploring the mechanisms involved in sleep-dependent memory storage, a team of University of Michigan (U-M) cellular biologists found that RNAs associated with an understudied cell compartment in hippocampal neurons vary greatly between sleeping and sleep-deprived mice after learning. Sara Aton, Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and James Delorme, a…

Amanda Garner, Ph.D., is awarded the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry 2022 David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry!

Congratulations to Amanda Garner, Ph.D., for receiving the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry 2022 David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry! The David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry, awarded in even-numbered years, is intended to recognize seminal contributions by young scientists to medicinal chemistry. The nominee must have had a primary role…

Chase Weidmann, Ph.D., receives a K22 grant from NCI

Congratulations to Chase Weidmann, Ph.D., for receiving a K22 grant from NCI for “Unraveling the MALAT1 lncRNA-protein interaction networks that drive lung cancer metastasis” This project’s goal is to integrate cutting-edge sequencing and quantitative proteomics technologies with cell-based functional approaches to understand how RNA-protein interaction networks of MALAT1 promote metastatic activity in human lung cancers. Chase…

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U-M study sheds light on how bacteria control their detoxification

By Morgan Sherburne, Michigan News Bacteria need to constantly adapt to compete against other species for nutrient sources and to survive against threats such as antibiotics and toxins. In an effort to understand how bacteria control and regulate this adaptation, University of Michigan researchers from the Center for RNA Biomedicine are examining how RNA polymerase—the…

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Redefining long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) to study transposons in plants

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) constitute the new frontier of investigation for molecular biologists. However, lncRNA is inconsistently defined, which fails the research community in several ways. In a scientific review [2], Professor Andrzej Wierzbicki from the University of Michigan, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and collaborators challenge the contemporary ways of understanding lncRNAs…