By Elisabeth Paymal Altogether, over 6,800 rare diseases affect an estimated 25 million to 30 million Americans. These patients who suffer from genetic mutations that often occur within the same family, are still nowadays left with few, if any, therapeutic options. However, RNA on-going discoveries and the development of new technology and tools such as…
Karen Montoya, Ph.D. Candidate Chemistry, College of LSA Faculty: Nils G. Walter LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karen-montoyaa I am interested in chemistry at the interface with biology and medicine. I have always had an interest in understanding the pathology of a disease. Through my research, I am working on a diagnostic tool that detects microRNA (miRNAs) molecular…
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 5: March 26, 2021, 12:10–1:05 pm More information on the Symposium Blog by MiSciWriters “Mechanisms that target RNA for destruction” Christopher D. Lima, Ph.D. Alfred P. Sloan Chair; Chair and Member and Professor, Structural Biology Program, Sloan Kettering Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Christopher Lima Lab TALK ABSTRACT Decay and…
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 3: March 25, 2021, 1:35–2:30 pm More information on the Symposium Blog by MiSciWriters “Exploration of Biological Diversity to Discover Novel Molecular Technologies” Feng Zhang, Ph.D. James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering at MIT Core Member, Broad…
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 2: March 25, 2021, 12:10–1:05 pm More information on the Symposium Blog by MiSciWriters “Structure-based discovery of new functions in large RNAs” Kevin Weeks, Ph.D. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Chemistry, University of North Carolina The Kevin Weeks Lab TALK ABSTRACT The functions of many RNA molecules – including mRNAs, long non-coding RNAs,…
Ameya Jalihal, Ph.D. (alumnus, graduated in December 2020) Chemistry, College of LSA Faculty: Nils G. Walter Dissertation Defense, Thursday, December 10, 2020 “To find and to form: Strategies for intracellular molecular target search and higher-order assembly” Ameya Jalihal, advisor: Nils G. Walter Google Scholar LinkedIn What are your research interests? I’m interested in how…
Photo: Jalihal describing his research based on live cell single particle tracking. Growing up in Chennai, in South India, Ameya Jalihal, Ph.D., has always loved going on nature walks, watching birds, and collecting insects and seashells. While observing nature and biodiversity, young Jalihal had many questions that fueled his passion for life sciences. Inspired by…
Meredith Purchal Ph.D. Candidate Program in Chemical Biology, College of LSA Faculty: Kristin Koutmou and Markos Koutmos Koutmos lab Koutmou lab Linkedin What are your research interests? I am primarily interested structurally characterizing the interactions between RNA and RNA modifying enzymes using x-ray crystallography. Post transcriptional modification of RNA is widespread and ubiquitous, adding a…
More information and required registration are available here. Dr. Melissa Moore, chief scientific officer at Moderna Therapeutics, will be hosted for a virtual seminar on February 10, 2021, 4:00– 5:00pm EST by the University of Michigan Center for RNA Biomedicine as part of the worldwide RNA Collaborative Seminar Series. The title of her talk is:…
In our September 2020 issue of RNA Translated, 2020 the year of the RNA virus, we presented how University of Michigan (U-M) Center for RNA Biomedicine’s scientists pivoted their research to address the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them is Dr. Chinnaiyan and his team of prostate cancer researchers who focused on two proteins that are…
Jiaqiang Zhu, Ph.D. Candidate Biostatistics, School of Public Health Principal Investigator/Faculty: Xiang Zhou Group (http://xzlab.org ) What are your research interests? My research interests involve the development of efficient statistical methods and computational tools for large-scale genomic studies, including bulk and single cell RNA sequencing, bisulfite sequencing, and spatially resolved transcriptomics. How does RNA relate…
Tasha Thong Graduate Student Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health Faculty: Justin Colacino Twitter: @tashathong Instagram: tashathong Google Scholar: Tasha Thong What are your research interests? My research is focused on uncovering the biological basis for racial disparities in breast cancer by exploring the relationship between normal mammary stem cells, genetics, and…
The 2020 Nobel Prize of Chemistry recognizes Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany, and Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, USA, “for the development of a method for genome editing.” Every year, the University of Michigan Complex Systems invites U-M faculty to comment about the Nobel Prizes awards. In…
Only a couple of weeks after defending her Ph.D. thesis in November, Sarah Owen, a graduate student in Chemical Engineering in Dr. Sunitha Nagrath’s lab, landed her dream job. “It all went very fast,” she explained, “I had a seven-hour zoom interview on Thursday, and they offered me the job the following Monday!” In January…
Robb Welty Post-doctoral fellow Chemistry Principal Investigator/Faculty: Nils Walter Google scholar What are your research interests? Academically speaking, my scientific interests lie at the intersection of chemistry, physics, and biology. I suppose that I just enjoy figuring out how systems work. It turns out that physics provides an awesome framework for figuring things out,…
The RNA Collaborative Seminar Series is pleased to welcome its 17th and 18th partners, the Cambridge RNA Club (UK) and the Groupe de Recherche RNA (GDR RNA – France). The Cambridge RNA Club is an informal seminar series bringing together the RNA community in Cambridge and surrounding areas. The GDR RNA aims to bring together French…
Laura Scott, Ph.D. Research Professor Biostatistics School of Public Health email: ljst@umich.edu What are your research interests? I want to understand how a persons sex, genetics and physiology influences both gene expression and degradation to create differences in gene expression between people, and how differences in gene expression influence disease. Who/what brought you to science?…
A Washington Post video (duration 6’16”) – December 8, 2020 How mRNA helped scientists create a COVID-19 vaccine in record time Our RNA scientists, Alice Telesnitsky, Microbiology and Immunology, and Nils G. Walter, Chemistry, Biophysics & Biological Chemistry and co-director of the Center for RNA Biomedicine, explain how RNA research allows to save millions of…
“Over the years, studies have found that more than 80% of the genome may be involved in transcription, or producing noncoding RNA,” said Andrzej Wierzbicki, a professor in the University of Michigan Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. “So the dilemma was: Is all this noncoding RNA functional? Is it important for something? Or…
Stephen C.J. Parker, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics Department of Human Genetics Contact Lab website Research interests We study the effects of genetic variation on chromatin architecture and transcriptional regulation at single-cell resolution. Our research group uses an integrative approach in the general fields of computational biology and functional genomics. The…
