Monika Franco Ph.D. Candidate Program in Chemical Biology Koutmou Lab What are your research interests? My thesis work is centered around investigating mRNA modifications and how they impact protein translation. Who/what brought you to science? People. People brought me to science. My friends, my family, my professors. It was the idea that…
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…
Rajesh Rao, M.D. Leonard G Miller Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Associate Professor of Pathology Associate Professor of Human Genetics Medical School Website Dr. Rao is interested in the mechanisms that control the normal development of stem cells into retinal cells, and how they are involved…
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…
Bambarendage Pinithi (Pini) Perera Research Assistant Professor Environmental Health Sciences School of Public Health Lab website My primary research interests are in the field of environmental epigenetics, which seeks to identify molecular mechanisms and changes in epigenetic cues that result from environmental exposures at critical times in life, and links of these phenomena to…
The scientific journey of Bambarendage (Pini) Perera, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health Diet, exercise, or environmental exposures have an impact on how our genes are activated or silenced. These factors do not permanently affect our DNA, but they can interfere with our gene expression by acting upon RNA…
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…
Monday, September 13, 4:00 pm, Rhiju Das, Stanford University Monday, October 4, 4:00 pm, Byron Purse, San Diego State University Monday, October 18, 4:00 pm, Tim Stasevich, Colorado State University – Link to recording Monday, November 8, 4:00 pm, Zhonggang Hou & Jun Hee Lee – Link to recording Monday, December 13, 4:00 pm, Paul…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
An initiative to make the University of Michigan a world leader in RNA therapeutics, spearheaded by the Center for RNA Biomedicine and the Biointerfaces Institute Fueled by the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine success and the recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and elucidation of the bacterial CRISPR systems that can be harnessed for…
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…
Our inaugural issue of RNA Translated, the Center for RNA Biomedicine’s annual magazine and report, was published while COVID-19 pandemic was raging. 10 U-M scientists explained their research on viruses and how their findings could apply to treat or prevent COVID-19. The magazine also highlights two core facilities of the center, the Bru-seq Lab and…
In 2021, the first mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 received FDA approval. Based on decades of RNA research, these vaccines are only the beginning of the RNA therapeutic research breakthroughs. Our 2021 issue of RNA Translated presents 18 interviews with U-M scientists and scholars whose research contributes to RNA therapeutics. The magazine particularly focuses on three…
Introducing Chase Weidmann, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and RNA Scholar Faculty of the Center for RNA Biomedicine.
Chase Weidmann had three goals for a career: do something “cool,” improve the lives of other people, and, of course, be able to support himself. Weidmann found the “cool” in high school science classes and he quickly realized that biology and `biotechnology offer vast uncharted territories to explore. One such uncharted area was the academic…
